Becoming my best self

[wrijak]

Day 43 no porn
This past weekend after the porn dream I've been feeling slight sluggishness and brain fog. Also I could feel getting triggered a lot by random women again, which just a week ago it felt like I was making a lot of progress with that. Yesterday I wasn't able to do anything productive and in the evening I was with the GF and felt quite low mood suddenly. Kept trying to remind myself that perhaps it's just part of the process - mental housecleaning, as @Androg mentinoned. But it did seem strange and almost like a small relapse. Don't think I experienced anything similar in past streaks - just regular wet dreams.

Today however it did seem much better, still felt a bit off in the morning, but afterwards had a pretty productive day at work, and thoughts seemed to be clearer. Also my mood and confidence felt pretty good. I guess it just was a small bump on the road! Hopefully will keep improving.

 

[Androg]

Just remember that those "senseless" mood swings are due to the randomly swinging pendulum of your neurochemistry attempting to reset itself. Keep some detachment.

 

[wrijak]

Day 45 no porn
Really appreciate the feedback @Androg!

I'm feeling pretty much back on track right now - motivation and energy is great. However I did have another porn dream tonight! But luckily it didn't seem to throw me out of balance at all, like the last one did, it happened quite late in the night (pretty much in the morning), and I still felt good today.

The dream was actually really strangely specific and I could still remember it the morning, thought I'd share it: in short, it involved me first being with a crush I was obsessed with in college, and then feeling ashamed in front of her and suddenly I was alone watching a porn scene. Found that interesting, since it pretty much reflects the pattern I had as an addicted teen: feeling awkward around women, not feeling confident in myself, and as a compensation for that, turning my focus to porn.

One thing that sucks about these porn dreams is the intense feelings of shame and self-hate in the morning and waking up feeling like a complete failure and loser for relapsing. Of course, after a while when I wake up back to reality, I feel ok. But to me this shows that my shame about porn is still very much here. I guess it's normal in some ways to feel this way, and of course ideally I don't want to relapse, so logically it doesn't feel good thinking like I did. However, in other ways, I don't think shame does any good - all it does is that it creates this conflict and self-hate inside of me. It makes me hate the part of me that was addicted, instead of accepting it. This shows me there's still a lot of inner work to do here.

 

[wrijak]

Day 47 no porn
I've been noticing some anger and resentment coming up in the past days. It's interesting, I'm usually a pretty calm and non-conflictive, and anger is almost alien to me - I always took pride on being the rational one and always keeping my head up.

Yesterday I got a bit a bit angry at my girlfriend. Not proud of it, but at the same time it is making me realize that I am missing having some clear boundaries in our relationship. She sometimes likes to pull my strings and test me. I usually try to stay non-reactive and stoic, or at least that's my tell myself - I guess sometimes it is bugging me more that I think, and all I do is let her cross my boundaries and have a weak frame. As result, some resentment builds.

Also got really frustrated today with friends in a group chat - we've been trying to plan a group holiday in September and they keep coming with BS changes of plans. Then noticed myself also getting angry and frustrated at work - with my project, at my boss etc.

After coming home today I felt a bit out of balance and stressed. However I decided I won't get lost in this and instead will try and look at with curiosity - anger might be alien to me, but I'm sure it has always been here, just wasnt noticing it and was numbing it.

Doing some deep breathing and yoga felt good though. Will try and continue noticing when anger is coming up. And will try working more on having stronger boundaries and making them clear.

 

[wrijak]

Day 52 no porn
Sort of stopped posting for a couple days. One reason is I had a friend visiting my town over the weekend so was quite busy.
Another reason is we had some turmoil in the last few days with my girlfriend - sort of following my previous post. I wasn't really feeling my best and didn't really feel like post here - instead journaled in my private diary (I guess I just felt like I really needed to vent my feelings and brain dump my thoughts, without worrying about having to share). Although I suppose still keeping to my daily posts here would be ideal - especially when not feeling my best. But glad to say I managed to stay these past days without being tempted by any urges!

Also glad to say that yesterday we managed to talk things through a lot with my gf. Had probably the most honest talk in months, we shared our feelings, talked about our issues (which I now realize we've both been actively avoiding for a while), got quite emotional, and we both agreed we want to stay together and try working on our issues and improving our relationship. My hope is it will improve from now. I feel like just the talk by itself helped a lot, but further work is definitely needed, so we will see.

 

[wrijak]

Day 54 no porn
Feeling good. Leaving this weekend for a trip with gf and few friends.

 

[wrijak]

Day 57 no porn
The weekend trips was great! Spent most of the weekend together with gf, and our relationship seems to be doing pretty good now.

---

I'm realizing I'm at a point now where I'm starting to get a bit lazy to write these daily posts. Main reason = I'm starting to feel like I don't need it. Urges are quite rare, and often there's not much to report. Most of my days are pretty good and productive, and even if I am experiencing some crisis (for example the relationship turmoil last week which made me feel out of balance a bit), I mostly manage to deal with it in healthy ways and got back on track.

Another reason is, that there's a part of me that would just like to leave this addiction behind me. Might be just over a year on this forum now, and 57 days in this streak, but in reality, it's more like the last 5 years of trying to deal with this porn addiction. Part of me just doesn't want to think about it anymore, or spend any energy on it, and instead focus on building other areas of my life - the good stuff.

I guess these are all good and sensible reasons. Eventually I'd like to build such a fulfilling life where I don't ever need any addiction, and I can progress forever, without relying on accountability. But I don't think that day is here yet.

I realize I might be kidding myself a bit. Have to be realistic - I'm just 2 months in, just two weeks ago I was hit quite strong after a few porn dreams, and just two monthts ago I was full into the addiction watching porn at least few times a month. I realize that with this type of thinking I might be myself setting up for failure. It's exactly this type of thinking that made me fail last year - probably around the same time (the 2-month mark) I felt like I'm doing good, and I started posting less frequently, but without the accountability I let the addiction slowly sneak back into my life. It wasn't immediately, took maybe a few months, but in the end I fell back into old habits. Also realizing Im being a bit selfish - this community is helping me a lot to stay accountable and turn my life around, and would be nice to eventually give back and motivate other members.

So with that said, I'm not planning to stop daily posting, and will try to continue, even if sometimes it might not feel like it's needed as much, and stay consistent for the longer run. Might however try focusing on shorter posts now, and focus mainly on consistency.

 

[Simon2]

I've learned that I can feel really strong for quite a while, and then suddenly, after a few months I can almost not resist... It's like riding waves.

 

[wrijak]

Day 58 no porn
Had a pretty long and slightly stressful day at work. But although it can be stressful, I have actually been enjoying it and feeling quite fulfilled recently - now working on my first pretty big and complex project, so getting lots of new experience and learning a lot. Will try to wind down for the rest of the evening.

 

[wrijak]

Day 60 no porn!
Days flying by pretty fast. Doing pretty good now: urges are quite rare, I don't get as horny when seeing attractive girls around anymore - sure I still enjoy them, but it's not accompanied with the feelings of urgency and anxiety as much.

 

[Blondie]

Congrats @wrijak!

60 days is great.

 

[wrijak]

Day 63 no porn
Noticing that urges to MO have been coming more often recently. My goal so far has been only abstaining from porn, and haven't found MO too much of a problem (during these past two months I'd say I MO'd like once in 1-2 weeks, and try to keep it healthy without fantasising and just sensations).

I got an urge this morning however, after which I MO'd, and after that I realized that I MO'd two times in this past week (last time was just earlier this week, and before that also wasn't too long ago). I am feeling fine, however it is making me think. If it keeps happening more often, it might not be a step into the right direction. Will try to observe myself in following days/weeks - if I continue to have urges and MO too often, and find it a problem, maybe might set a goal to also abstain from MO for a while.

 

[wrijak]

Day 71 no porn
I’m back! Still going, however after not checking in here for a couple days again, it’ getting pretty easy to fall out of my journaling habit.

On one hand, I tell myself that it’s ok and not a big deal - no one is making me post here, it’s my decision to do so, and it’s fine if I stop posting for a few days. On the other hand, in the past few days I could clearly see that there is a lot of benefit to posting here - and a lot damage to not posting. It makes me less committed, it makes this whole “porn addiction thing” seem less important in my head and it makes me lose focus and become complacent (and we all know where that leads).

In the past days I actually saw my self starting to out of balance a bit and actually had quite a close call to relapsing last night. I stayed this past whole weekend at home. Most of my weekends during this summer I had something planned, which started to get a bit tiring, so I decided it would be a good idea to just stay at home this weekend to work on my projects and relax, etc. Glad I did it, however doing so for the whole weekend wasn’t the healthiest option - on Sunday I started feeling in a bit of a rut and low mood, and found myself spending a lot of time binging Youtube and being lazy. During the afternoon I started having some mild urges, which in the evening resulted in me almost relapsing.
I was sitting in my bed and got really horny and started to MO. Wasn't a healthy MO - I could feel the familiar compulsive feelings and craving porn. I remember at one point even thinking “is this it? is this back to day one?”.

Luckily my porn blockers proved themselves effective again. At one point I tried typing a porn site into my search bar - I knew it wouldn’t work (although a part of me probably hoped it did). I just sat in my bed for a few minutes and contemplated about going to my hiding place where I keep my pornblocker passwords on a post-it-note. During that time I realized I don’t even want to see porn. My body might be craving it, but do I really want to spend my time looking at useless stimulation? sitting in front of my computer looking at random low-value women, getting naked on the internet and having sex with other random strangers? after abstaining from it for 71 days? is it worth it? is that who I want to be?

So glad to say I didn’t relapse, however it definitely was a big slip, probably my biggest one in the past 71 days. Would 100% have relapsed if it wasn’t for the little bit of extra friction from the porn blockers.
However it’s definitely a wake up call, and a sign that it's time to get focused again.

Here’s a few points and takeaways I have from this:

• Staying home the whole weekend is definitely not a good idea. Even if I do it for a good cause, like working on projects, staying productive, etc. At least going for a walk or to the gym is needed.
• Doing consistent journals and sharing here definitely helps. Not journaling and posting makes my mind believe that it's not as important and I’m not as committed, which as I found out, makes it easier to relapse.
• I probably don’t need to post into my journal every day. Thinking that I need to just makes it stresful for me, and it makes me feel like I’m failing if I don’t post for a couple days. It is important however to check in consistently and at least every other day or a few times a week.

To the last point: If I want to journal consistently, I decided I need to rethink my system a bit. I realize that my problem with journaling is that some days there’s too much friction for me to open my journal thread, see a empty reply page, and start writing something. Some days it comes easily and I feel like I could brain dump a whole essay, but some days nothing comes to mind. There's a feeling like "I have to come up with something". So instead of having to do that, I thought I will try some prompts or questions to answer every time I post. If I want to, I can also write something extra, but I don’t have to.

So far came up with these questions:

1. How is my emotional balance today?
2. What challenges and triggers did I overcome today?
3. What positive steps did I take today?

These are inspired a bit by the weekly health-monitoring I used to do in the RecoveryNation workshop, however I simplified and changed them a bit. Might adjust them or add to them later. Going to try these for a couple weeks and see how they work.

 

[Androg]

Good insight. Going out and making eye contact IRL is soothing to us tribal primates.

 

[wrijak]

Day 72
As written yesterday, decided to make these simple check-in prompts.
Main idea is that it will make these posts more simple and easier. But also thinking it could help me bring more awareness and introspection to my progress. My goal isn't to reach an X day streak (although that sure helps). My goal is to keep healing and improving. But sometimes I end up losing focus on the big picture, or I don't ask myself the right questions and end up not being completely honest to myself.
So let's give this a go:

Today's emotional balance:
Feeling overall good, although did feel some mild stress at work today.

Today's challenges & triggers:
Spent half of the day answering to emails, which I hate. Probably what caused the mild stress.

Today's positives:
Thinking about how I could make a better system for answering emails to make this annoying task more easier (making templates for reccuring emails, downstreaming inbox mails,...). Will try to work on that this week.
After coming home, did a long breathwork session and some yoga - helped a lot. Will try to wind down rest of the evening.

 

[wrijak]

Day 74
Today's emotional balance:
Not having my best day today. Started feeling a bit under the weather yesterday, probably due to the temperature getting a bit colder. Also think nutrition/stress playing some part aswell. Also didn't sleep much well tonight, which resulted in me feeling like crap at work.

Today's challenges & triggers:
Arrived home and started feeling urges. Also noticed thoughts arising, like "porn could definitely make me feel better now". So decided to do my check-in right away.
Feeling sick has always been a good opportunity for me to relapse. The dopamine hits from porn always seem like a great idea when not feeling great. But from my experience, compulsively binging porn usually just tips my (already out-of-balance) system even more out of balance.

Today's positives:
Not planning to do the mistakes today. Gonna make a plan to get well again:
- make a healthy meal
- do some yoga/meditation to relax after work
- relax the rest of the evening and give myself a break from my to-do list, maybe watch some movie.
- will try to avoid binging on stuff like youtube while in my bed (=risky)
- go to sleep early

 

[Androg]

Get well soon. You're wise to know your triggers and prepare.

 

[wrijak]

I relapsed yesterday.
Happened in the evening: I had a pretty stressful day at work, and after work I went to have a few beers with friends in a bar. After coming home, I suppose the alcohol+stress reignited some old pathways which led to the idea that "I need to get a dopamine hit before going to sleep". Definitely wasn't planning to relapse (although I guess my unconscious mind had a different plan), I wasn't planning to unlock my porn filters, but instead started looking at a mostly-SFW site which I know has some triggering pictures. Turns out it has way more explicit pictures that I remembered in the past - this sort of spiraled, and even managed to find a few porn links which were not blocked by my porn filters.

What lead to the relapse?
Although the alcohol definitely played a part, I definitely can't put all the blame on it. Looking back at the past weeks, there were definitely a few things that led to it. Alcohol sure played the part, and made it harder to control myself, but it was really the headspace that I was in during drinking.
Some main reasons I can think of:

• I had been experiencing constant stress, mostly from work. Even in my last post when I described I was getting sick, I realized that the main reason was really stress. Have been working a lot, either at my job, but even on my own projects at home. With my own projects I have a conflict, since it's stuff I like to do and am passionate about, but I need to find a better balance.
• Haven't been as committed. Have been trying to get back to consistent posting but have been failing. Mostly because I felt like I'm doing ok and wanted to focus on other stuff. This led to complacency.
• Some frustration in my relationship. The relationship has been doing pretty ok recently, but mainly on the sexual side it has been low. She hasn't been interested in having sex recently, maybe once in 3-4 weeks, which has been making me feel frustrated and rejected a bit.
• Have been MOing more recently. I think I MOd like 3 times in the past week which probably hasn't been good.
• Some influence by friends - I think this definitely played a small part yesterday. I went to a bar with some guy-friends from my high school. While thirsting for girls and porn is something I've been trying to improve on myself in the past years, this can't be said for most of my friends. After doing porn recovery for a while, you can clearly tell on a person if their brain is affected by porn or not - in ways they look at women, talk about women, how they see them as objects, etc. I still like hanging out with them, and it's not like when we're together they're discussing porn or something extreme. But just the overall atmosphere of hanging around with these guys probably did influence some of the ideas I had yesterday evening.

I had around a 83 day streak since my last relapse. Although the fact that I relapsed definitely sucks, it does, in ways, feel different that many of my relapses in the past.
Some positives are...

• I didn't go fully in, and didn't visit any of the usual porn sites, and mostly stayed on semi-SFW stuff. Although, as mentioned, it did have a lot of NSFW stuff hidden in it, and I did see enough explicit stuff, so that can't really not-call this a relapse. But still way better than the usual browsing of hundreds of porn videos, I suppose.
• Right now I don't seem as affected by it. Don't feel the usual rut and brain fog that I usually feel after a relapse. Almost like my brain has kind of resisted it. (But can't be kidding myself too much - I'm sure it has made some damage.)
• Wasn't really as excited by the porn content. This is kind of surprising to me - in the past, I remember anytime I relapsed I was thinking like this is the best thing ever, and how could I be missing out on it. Now during the relapse I noticed most of the time thinking like this isn't even that good, and this isn't really what I want to be doing. Sure, a part of me was still drawn to it and enjoying it, but it's almost like my identity has changed and was rejecting it. This shows me that at least some progress has been made in the past 3 months.
• Don't feel as much shame or sadness. In the past I would feel depressed for days after losing a 83 day streak, which would make me fall back into a relapse cycle. Now I feel ... fine. I guess this might seem strange and counterintuitive. It definitely sucks that I relapsed, and I definitely felt like trash the moments after relapsing. But now I'm kind of realizing that I can view this as a learning experience. Looking back at the past two weeks, I can definitely see what led to is, and I can make a better plan so it won't happen again.
• Overall, kind of trying to view this thing as an experiment - during these past months, even though a most of me was commited to recovery and self-improvement, there was still a small part of me that had this idea that one day I could relapse. Perhaps there was even some excitement behind it. Now it happened - and for me this just reinforces the idea that I don't want to do this anymore.

My plan now:
Although right now it kind of feels like it didn't affect me that much, it definitely was a step backwards that probably did some damage of rewiring old pathways in my brain. I'm definitely expecting some urges to come in the following days. It's important not to fall back into the old habit - instead of getting to day X, making it to day 83+X. My plan:

1. Stay committed to recovery - and will keep with updates to my journal
2. I'm hesitant if I want to keep counting days. Going from day 83 to 0 seems really demotivating, like I'm throwing away all the progress I have made. I don't really care about the number, what I care about is making this work for life. Although I suppose counting days is a good tool for at least the couple first weeks. In the past I used to have a spreadsheet where I would track my PMOs / MOs in the past year - might consider something similar.
3. Need to start taking my stress management more seriously. This is really my biggest trigger and untill I work on this, danger of relapsing will always be here. Thinking about making some stress relief routines that work best for me, and doing them consistently. Also need to put more focus on excercise and nutrition.
4. Fix some loopholes in my porn blockers - will block the website that I visited yesterday.

 

[Androg]

I relapsed yesterday.
Happened in the evening: I had a pretty stressful day at work, and after work I went to have a few beers with friends in a bar. After coming home, I suppose the alcohol+stress reignited some old pathways which led to the idea that "I need to get a dopamine hit before going to sleep". Definitely wasn't planning to relapse (although I guess my unconscious mind had a different plan), I wasn't planning to unlock my porn filters, but instead started looking at a mostly-SFW site which I know has some triggering pictures. Turns out it has way more explicit pictures that I remembered in the past - this sort of spiraled, and even managed to find a few porn links which were not blocked by my porn filters.

What lead to the relapse?
Although the alcohol definitely played a part, I definitely can't put all the blame on it. Looking back at the past weeks, there were definitely a few things that led to it. Alcohol sure played the part, and made it harder to control myself, but it was really the headspace that I was in during drinking.
Some main reasons I can think of:

• I had been experiencing constant stress, mostly from work. Even in my last post when I described I was getting sick, I realized that the main reason was really stress. Have been working a lot, either at my job, but even on my own projects at home. With my own projects I have a conflict, since it's stuff I like to do and am passionate about, but I need to find a better balance.
• Haven't been as committed. Have been trying to get back to consistent posting but have been failing. Mostly because I felt like I'm doing ok and wanted to focus on other stuff. This led to complacency.
• Some frustration in my relationship. The relationship has been doing pretty ok recently, but mainly on the sexual side it has been low. She hasn't been interested in having sex recently, maybe once in 3-4 weeks, which has been making me feel frustrated and rejected a bit.
• Have been MOing more recently. I think I MOd like 3 times in the past week which probably hasn't been good.
• Some influence by friends - I think this definitely played a small part yesterday. I went to a bar with some guy-friends from my high school. While thirsting for girls and porn is something I've been trying to improve on myself in the past years, this can't be said for most of my friends. After doing porn recovery for a while, you can clearly tell on a person if their brain is affected by porn or not - in ways they look at women, talk about women, how they see them as objects, etc. I still like hanging out with them, and it's not like when we're together they're discussing porn or something extreme. But just the overall atmosphere of hanging around with these guys probably did influence some of the ideas I had yesterday evening.

I had around a 83 day streak since my last relapse. Although the fact that I relapsed definitely sucks, it does, in ways, feel different that many of my relapses in the past.
Some positives are...

• I didn't go fully in, and didn't visit any of the usual porn sites, and mostly stayed on semi-SFW stuff. Although, as mentioned, it did have a lot of NSFW stuff hidden in it, and I did see enough explicit stuff, so that can't really not-call this a relapse. But still way better than the usual browsing of hundreds of porn videos, I suppose.
• Right now I don't seem as affected by it. Don't feel the usual rut and brain fog that I usually feel after a relapse. Almost like my brain has kind of resisted it. (But can't be kidding myself too much - I'm sure it has made some damage.)
• Wasn't really as excited by the porn content. This is kind of surprising to me - in the past, I remember anytime I relapsed I was thinking like this is the best thing ever, and how could I be missing out on it. Now during the relapse I noticed most of the time thinking like this isn't even that good, and this isn't really what I want to be doing. Sure, a part of me was still drawn to it and enjoying it, but it's almost like my identity has changed and was rejecting it. This shows me that at least some progress has been made in the past 3 months.
• Don't feel as much shame or sadness. In the past I would feel depressed for days after losing a 83 day streak, which would make me fall back into a relapse cycle. Now I feel ... fine. I guess this might seem strange and counterintuitive. It definitely sucks that I relapsed, and I definitely felt like trash the moments after relapsing. But now I'm kind of realizing that I can view this as a learning experience. Looking back at the past two weeks, I can definitely see what led to is, and I can make a better plan so it won't happen again.
• Overall, kind of trying to view this thing as an experiment - during these past months, even though a most of me was commited to recovery and self-improvement, there was still a small part of me that had this idea that one day I could relapse. Perhaps there was even some excitement behind it. Now it happened - and for me this just reinforces the idea that I don't want to do this anymore.

My plan now:
Although right now it kind of feels like it didn't affect me that much, it definitely was a step backwards that probably did some damage of rewiring old pathways in my brain. I'm definitely expecting some urges to come in the following days. It's important not to fall back into the old habit - instead of getting to day X, making it to day 83+X. My plan:

1. Stay committed to recovery - and will keep with updates to my journal
2. I'm hesitant if I want to keep counting days. Going from day 83 to 0 seems really demotivating, like I'm throwing away all the progress I have made. I don't really care about the number, what I care about is making this work for life. Although I suppose counting days is a good tool for at least the couple first weeks. In the past I used to have a spreadsheet where I would track my PMOs / MOs in the past year - might consider something similar.
3. Need to start taking my stress management more seriously. This is really my biggest trigger and untill I work on this, danger of relapsing will always be here. Thinking about making some stress relief routines that work best for me, and doing them consistently. Also need to put more focus on excercise and nutrition.
4. Fix some loopholes in my porn blockers - will block the website that I visited yesterday.

Be extra careful for the next few days.

 

[wrijak]

Some thoughts after yesterday:
Over the past day after the slip/relapse I still haven't felt affected as much, and no urges so far, or plans to repeat it, which is good. Still will stay careful however.

An unexpected observation I had after yesterday was that I actualy did feel a sense of relief after the relapse... That is not to say that the relapse was good - it was not. However it gave me an insight that perhaps I had been too hard on myself about my recovery.
Thoughts like I NEED to stop watching porn, I NEED to reach X days, I NEED to do my daily posts .... I NEED to be perfect every day, and if not then I'm a failure. Because of this the relapse (although not good) actually lifted a small weight of my shoulders. So I realize these thoughts are not the best approach - it makes it feel like something hard.

I decided that right now I won't be counting my daily streak number, at least for a while. I will be tracking it, but only checking it once in a while. Will see how this will go - if I feel like I need it, I will return to it again.

I have been feeling some mild stress and anxiety over this past day, but not so much different than I have been in the past weeks. The PMO could've made it worse, or not, hard to tell. Have picked up and started reading the book Sedona Method. I have been doing a similar practice in the past, and also have read the book Letting go by Dr. David Hawkins which is similar. Feels like this is something that might be good for me now to add to my routines.