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:
- How is my emotional balance today?
- What challenges and triggers did I overcome today?
- 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.