Goal : Living a full life

formerlyhappyboy

formerlyhappyboy

Member
Day 5
No PMO, No MO

Haven't been around for the past 3 days 🙃. So much for writing everyday, but I've kept up with the reboot and I'm 5 days through :)

I don't want to be too hopeful, but I can already see signs of myself coming out of the flatline and anhedonia that has been tormenting me for so long.

Books made my childhood and I read a lot of them especially fantasy. I read them a lot to escape the world. And for about 2 years, I've not been able to successfully read a book completely. Anytime I try, I can't just concentrate. I believe this addiction played a big role in this, but it can also be attributed to social media too.

I've missed entering and losing myself in a book, and regaining my ability to do this would really be the highlight of this reboot.
 
SmokenMirrors

SmokenMirrors

Well-Known Member
formerlyhappyboy said:
Books made my childhood and I read a lot of them especially fantasy. I read them a lot to escape the world. And for about 2 years, I've not been able to successfully read a book completely. Anytime I try, I can't just concentrate. I believe this addiction played a big role in this, but it can also be attributed to social media too.

I've missed entering and losing myself in a book, and regaining my ability to do this would really be the highlight of this reboot.
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I know this feeling deep to my core!
 
formerlyhappyboy

formerlyhappyboy

Member
Day 14 No PMO
Day 3 No MO

I got my double digits but I MO'ed last Thursday, the same day I was really stressed. I followed that pattern until Sunday when I was able to break it (really because it was as if I was completely drained). I didn't escalate to P which I'm really grateful for, because most of my recent relapses into P started with a harmless MO.

So here lies my dilemma again. I want to remove P completely from my life, but I don't want to stop MO. I don't believe it's inherently bad for me and I've had very satisfying ones. But I agree I'm addicted to it and it's not good for my reboot. It's why I went for hard mode in the first place.

I'm not restarting anyways and I'll continue taking PMO and MO as two different aspects of this reboot. Stress and inability to sleep was the major reason why I MO'ed that day, so for now I want to see how I can handle myself when I'm stressed without resorting to MO as the only way out. Listening to music immediately comes to mind, and I'd explore that. I'd love more opinions on other ways I can handle stress without my normal hardwired route.

Thanks for reading.
 
Galatians51

Galatians51

Active Member
formerlyhappyboy said:
Day 14 No PMO
Day 3 No MO

I got my double digits but I MO'ed last Thursday, the same day I was really stressed. I followed that pattern until Sunday when I was able to break it (really because it was as if I was completely drained). I didn't escalate to P which I'm really grateful for, because most of my recent relapses into P started with a harmless MO.

So here lies my dilemma again. I want to remove P completely from my life, but I don't want to stop MO. I don't believe it's inherently bad for me and I've had very satisfying ones. But I agree I'm addicted to it and it's not good for my reboot. It's why I went for hard mode in the first place.

I'm not restarting anyways and I'll continue taking PMO and MO as two different aspects of this reboot. Stress and inability to sleep was the major reason why I MO'ed that day, so for now I want to see how I can handle myself when I'm stressed without resorting to MO as the only way out. Listening to music immediately comes to mind, and I'd explore that. I'd love more opinions on other ways I can handle stress without my normal hardwired route.

Thanks for reading.
Click to expand...
Hey it sounds like you're doing a great job.

In the past I thought I could MO to "take the edge off" thinking if I did that then I wouldn't give in to PMO, however any time I would MO I would think about the images I looked at while PMO... which would inevitably result in me going back to PMO, sometimes it was days, sometimes hours before I gave in. So I totally agree with your plan of no MO and no PMO.

You asked for opinions on what you can do to handle stress. I'm sure this is different for every person, and will depend on what you like to do. For me, working takes stress off because it gives me a sense of accomplishment when I'm done. Working at a job, side hustle, working on my house, working in my garden, working on my hobbies, cooking a nice meal, organizing the garage, reading, writing. Keeping busy and being productive really helps because you use energy and feel satisfied and accomplished when you're done. When you PMO you just sit around like a lazy slug watching screens for long periods of time, and when you're done you feel totally defeated and like a waste a life (at least that's how i felt)... So doing the opposite tends to have the opposite effect on me. Also, using energy to be productive will make you physically and mentally tired (depending on what type of activity you're doing)... so you can just go to sleep at the end of the day, give in to that feeling of being tired instead of staying up late wasting time. I could also suggest exercising here, but honestly, how long are you really going to do that - it won't likely fill up enough time to be the only solution to this problem. Go jogging for twenty minutes, walk for an hour, go to the gym for an hour, all those are fine but they still leave you with lots of time afterward. Also one word of caution about going to the gym - it seems like ladies are finding creative ways to be more and more revealing at the gym - which doesn't exactly help our habit that we are trying to vanquish (at least it doesn't help me, maybe some guys aren't effected by this).

Another thing that helps me is talking to people, real people, in person, with no technology in your hand. Seems like it's a lost art these days to just spend time talking with somebody about life... so many people are just on their devices. Talking to people (beyond just chit chat) helps you feel human, and feel real emotions, healthy emotions... unlike watching porn - that makes me feel something less than human, and leaves my emotions in a complete disaster. Other benefits to talking to people is it takes up time (time that you're not tempted to PMO), it requires mental and emotional energy to really engage with somebody, and depending on the type of person you are, it can actually re-energize you, as well as have new and different thoughts about life.

I hope some of these tips help you, as they have me.
 
formerlyhappyboy

formerlyhappyboy

Member
Galatians51 said:
Hey it sounds like you're doing a great job.

In the past I thought I could MO to "take the edge off" thinking if I did that then I wouldn't give in to PMO, however any time I would MO I would think about the images I looked at while PMO... which would inevitably result in me going back to PMO, sometimes it was days, sometimes hours before I gave in. So I totally agree with your plan of no MO and no PMO.
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Thank you very much for your advice @Galatians51

I know how to MO without fantasizing or thinking about P, and I have done it many times but I've noticed this is not common. What really affects me is that I'm also addicted to MO itself apart from PMO, so when I do it, I do it compulsively and continuously till I'm completely empty and depressed. It is the depression that leads me back to PMO most times so I was very glad when I didn't give in to it.

Galatians51 said:
You asked for opinions on what you can do to handle stress. I'm sure this is different for every person, and will depend on what you like to do. For me, working takes stress off because it gives me a sense of accomplishment when I'm done. Working at a job, side hustle, working on my house, working in my garden, working on my hobbies, cooking a nice meal, organizing the garage, reading, writing. Keeping busy and being productive really helps because you use energy and feel satisfied and accomplished when you're done. When you PMO you just sit around like a lazy slug watching screens for long periods of time, and when you're done you feel totally defeated and like a waste a life (at least that's how i felt)... So doing the opposite tends to have the opposite effect on me. Also, using energy to be productive will make you physically and mentally tired (depending on what type of activity you're doing)... so you can just go to sleep at the end of the day, give in to that feeling of being tired instead of staying up late wasting time. I could also suggest exercising here, but honestly, how long are you really going to do that - it won't likely fill up enough time to be the only solution to this problem. Go jogging for twenty minutes, walk for an hour, go to the gym for an hour, all those are fine but they still leave you with lots of time afterward. Also one word of caution about going to the gym - it seems like ladies are finding creative ways to be more and more revealing at the gym - which doesn't exactly help our habit that we are trying to vanquish (at least it doesn't help me, maybe some guys aren't effected by this).

Another thing that helps me is talking to people, real people, in person, with no technology in your hand. Seems like it's a lost art these days to just spend time talking with somebody about life... so many people are just on their devices. Talking to people (beyond just chit chat) helps you feel human, and feel real emotions, healthy emotions... unlike watching porn - that makes me feel something less than human, and leaves my emotions in a complete disaster. Other benefits to talking to people is it takes up time (time that you're not tempted to PMO), it requires mental and emotional energy to really engage with somebody, and depending on the type of person you are, it can actually re-energize you, as well as have new and different thoughts about life.

I hope some of these tips help you, as they have me.
Click to expand...

These tips are wonderful and would definitely help me especially the part about talking to people.

Also, what you said about working on something that gives you accomplishment is golden. I can attribute part of the stress I experienced last week to a big personal decision I had to make which forced me to choose between 2 options or lose both of them. One of the factors that made me decide was accomplishment and my personal happiness. I'm feeling much more happy and purposeful now 😍
 
formerlyhappyboy

formerlyhappyboy

Member
The text formatting icons here are not functional anymore, or I'm I the only one experiencing this 🤔

I mostly use bold and emojis though...

To format a text as bold, I wrap it around two special characters like this: "["B"]"<text_here>"["/B"]" (without the quotes) e.g text here. I had to add the quotes so it does not get activated

For emojis, each emoji has a word assigned to it. For example: 😍 is "heart_eyes", 😊 is "blush". To activate it, I wrap the word around 2 colon ":" characters like this ":"heart_eyes":" (I put the quote again here, so it would not be activated)

I don't know what special characters are for other ones like italics or underline, but there would most likely be.
 
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