Formatting the hard drive

Awareness

Member
Yesterday was quite a good day, had social contacts and did quite a bit for my recovery. Sometimes social contacts cause me to relapses, because I quickly feel attacked, not quick-witted or intelligent enough - I then try to suppress these feelings with PMO...but yesterday was okay. I hope that these (egocentric) "beliefs" will become less as I recover.

I have started to list things for my recovery (e.g. writing in the forum, meditation) and things against (random use of youtube, edging, taking second looks...) and try to have more and more of the former so I'm always in the bonus. If I go out each day with a plus of good activities, those are usally good days.
Standstill is regression. (Day 4)
 

Awareness

Member
I got out of the day yesterday with + 2, what I am happy about, because my double looks, or rather the desire for them on the street, is already very noticeable.
Does anyone have a good tip on how to handle this?
Day 5
 

Awareness

Member
I am surprised every time by the inner peace, serenity and joy I feel, even when I am only away from PMO for a few days.

At the moment I can only imagine what it will be like after 30, 60, 90 .... days. On the one hand, it motivates me to finally lead a happy life. On the other hand, I know that the initial motivation gradually decreases after a relapse. It will be important for me not to rest on my laurels - even if it is only for 7 days - but to remain attentive and to use all the tools at my disposal.

I find it impressive to see that there are rebooters here in the forum with a long time without a PMO and still stay there and post. That is a crucial key.
Day 6
 

Escapeandnevercomeback

Respected Member
I am surprised every time by the inner peace, serenity and joy I feel, even when I am only away from PMO for a few days.

At the moment I can only imagine what it will be like after 30, 60, 90 .... days. On the one hand, it motivates me to finally lead a happy life. On the other hand, I know that the initial motivation gradually decreases after a relapse. It will be important for me not to rest on my laurels - even if it is only for 7 days - but to remain attentive and to use all the tools at my disposal.

I find it impressive to see that there are rebooters here in the forum with a long time without a PMO and still stay there and post. That is a crucial key.
Day 6
That's absolutely right. It happens to me too. I stay away from PMO for a not so long period of time and I see differences on mental and energy levels. But it could fluctuate, it does for me, I go through days when I feel like shit and they could become and invitation for the addicted brain to say: "See, it's not working, nofap is overrated, they lied to you to make you suffer, just stop being a stubborn dickhead and do some PMO." In those moments we need to remain connected to our perspective: We are done with porn. We are not using PMO anymore. Good luck, man.
 

Awareness

Member
Surprisingly, the weekend was relatively easy to handle. Day 8

Every time I start to get excited and celebrate my successes a little voice comes saying "you've been here before, be careful, it could happen at any moment".
It is still hard to fully trust myself and in that sense have confidence in my new start.

I find it scary to think against my own brain and worry about losing control. It's like another person is taking over - this morning I thought of Gollum. An "evil" version of oneself who is outcast and feels outcast by an "offence", is hurt, hurts himself, escapes to another world in the dark and is there on his own, to protect something that drains him inside. Gollum is basically a coping strategy to protect Smeagol and his feelings - to somehow protect himself by what was left of life.
 

Awareness

Member
Day 9

I realise how little/poor sleep and my defence mechanisms correlate. Yesterday was a bit more difficult, I was tired and that is a real trigger for me.

Tonight I woke up in the middle of the night with an erection and touched myself a bit before I woke up properly and went to the toilet, no P no O.

What is saving me at the moment is not taking my phone into the bedroom.
Prevention really is everything!
 

Blondie

Respected Member
You're doing great Awareness.

Yes poor sleep is definitely not conducive for fighting this, you need all your energy.

I'm not always perfect, but I really try to keep to my sleep schedule, it's not just good for quitting porn, but just life in general!

Best brother
 

downhillfromhere

Well-Known Member
Agree with that completely! Sleep is so often underrated, have been guilty of that myself. Always aim to get enough sleep, no matter how dull it may seem. :)
 

Awareness

Member
Many thanks @Blondie @downhillfromhere !

I have now reached a critical point.
It's midweek, I have a few days of sobriety (Day 10) and everyday life is hitting me in the form of less sleep (the more I think about it, the more I realise that sleep is one of the most essential things for a new start and like blondi said for the whole life) and more "stress".
I'm starting to question whether I can even have as much fun without PMO, what life even has to offer without it.

I know the answers to this question, namely that life has so much more to offer - or rather I can guess, because I haven't lasted more than 21 days without PMO since I can remember. But it's as if I'm afraid of it, afraid of a better life and a better me, of entering and exploring new territory - sounds quite paradoxical.

I am happy to have come this far and to ask myself such questions. P is no longer the solution.
 

downhillfromhere

Well-Known Member
I get that you feel afraid, because you don’t know what’s waiting. With P, we choose not to really live but we also know what we’re going to get. So we need to choose to let go, set off downhill and take off even if we don’t know if we’re going to stick the landing. And if we don’t - then that’s fine. Being disappointed and hurt is part of life, and it sets us up to be better every time we try.
 

Aryan

Member
Day 9

I realise how little/poor sleep and my defence mechanisms correlate. Yesterday was a bit more difficult, I was tired and that is a real trigger for me.

Tonight I woke up in the middle of the night with an erection and touched myself a bit before I woke up properly and went to the toilet, no P no O.

What is saving me at the moment is not taking my phone into the bedroom.
Prevention really is everything!


Completely Agreed. Prevention seems like the only solution.


I have also realised the same thing. The day i am not able to sleep or sleep well or when i wake up in the middle of night mostly due to too much stuff going in mind or to much use of Phone or any other similar factor... I feel most vulnerable to PMO.

Over the years I had created this bad habit where PMO was a solution whenever I am not able to sleep. My Relapses this month happens only at Midnight when i am most Vulnerable.

On the other hand the days with good sleep are easy days. To combat this i started with after dinner walk and reading few pages before i crash for night.
 

Awareness

Member
Thanks guys @downhillfromhere @Aryan for your participation, it's always enriching to read ideas and thoughts from others.

Part of my morning routine is to come here to the forum. It's the perfect start to the day for me (day 11).

Today I'm going to try a new sport. Although I have played team sports all my life, it is always exciting for me to get into a new social situation. For a long time it was a big problem for me to speak in and in front of groups. And for me, groups already meant more than two people.
Although I also have fears - of being rejected, of not being good enough, of the whole situation - I am excited to try something new and possibly add another tool to my recovery.
 

Awareness

Member
Had a tough afternoon today. While exploring new music - already at this point I think you can find the error - on Spotify I came across a cover of an attractive woman. I followed this path and then lost me for some time further and further in it until I "woke up", immediately packed my things and ran to the gym almost and trained me until just almost broken. It felt like a relapse. Same mechanism.

What is different though is how I deal with it, "in the past" I would never have gone out but would have been lost. This again puts me in a very positive mood and I immediately pick up where I left off for a short time this afternoon and was another.

I can clearly identify two triggers I should guard against in the future: Got a lot of work to take home and the decision was on the table to go to the new sport or not. I did not go, worked and still felt overwhelmed with the nature of the work, which immediately triggers anxiety and discomfort in me.
The fact that I didn't go to the new sport as planned felt like I was deceiving myself.

Say: implement such positive plans, the work can wait.
 

Awareness

Member
It's so scary what this drug of all drugs does to us.
Recently I was talking about the effects of P and why it's so damn hard to get off of it. In the book "Your Brain on porn", it is aptly described that P starts at our existence. It's like overeating, we can't absolutely give eating up - in this case sexuality - but need to find a healthy, measured way.

After some wonderful days, yesterday's incident taught me once again that I have to be attentive to my feelings.
One of the biggest challenges for me is dealing with these negative feelings.

Even though it seems like cheating, I don't reset the counter (day 12). Feel free guys to write me what you think about it and also if you disagree, or if you notice that I'm lying to myself!
However, if such a situation occurs again, no matter how supposedly harmless, I see it as a relapse - even if it's not directly P I'm looking at.

I wish everyone much strength on your way today, be aware!
 

Escapeandnevercomeback

Respected Member
Had a tough afternoon today. While exploring new music - already at this point I think you can find the error - on Spotify I came across a cover of an attractive woman. I followed this path and then lost me for some time further and further in it until I "woke up", immediately packed my things and ran to the gym almost and trained me until just almost broken. It felt like a relapse. Same mechanism.

What is different though is how I deal with it, "in the past" I would never have gone out but would have been lost. This again puts me in a very positive mood and I immediately pick up where I left off for a short time this afternoon and was another.

I can clearly identify two triggers I should guard against in the future: Got a lot of work to take home and the decision was on the table to go to the new sport or not. I did not go, worked and still felt overwhelmed with the nature of the work, which immediately triggers anxiety and discomfort in me.
The fact that I didn't go to the new sport as planned felt like I was deceiving myself.

Say: implement such positive plans, the work can wait.
Yes, everyone here knows how this goes: You go to a place online where there is risk to find porn substitutes (like me and Youtube). You see something triggering and BAM! In my case, especially when I have massive urges, something like that gives me the hardest rush imaginable.

Which leads to the second part: You did the best thing someone should do in a situation like that. You didn't stay there to indulge, as I've done many times, but you ran away from it. I like the call it the "2 seconds rule." It's the ideal scenario. We have about 2 seconds to walk away from the trigger. It all comes down to dopamine. You see the trigger and dopamine starts going up, it's the anticipation of the reward (the orgasm). Hence the 2 seconds rule. We don't have much time because the idea is to keep this porn dopamine as low as possible. The more it lasts, the wilder the dopamine goes and the harder it is to resist it. I'm sure you know this and everyone knows it as well: Spend 10 minutes looking at some clip or pictures and then you want more, you don't want to stop there. Because in the first 2 seconds you have a chance, after 10 minutes it's a different story. Prevention is indeed the biggest thing. In an ideal world, the advice would be: Don't go to the places where you can find triggers. Use internet for when you need it and close it. But I also know some people have a resistance to this, it makes them feel weird, like they can't do what everyone else does. "What, man, I can't watch Youtube now for the next 6 months or whatever?" But anyway, I don't think you can absolutely keep the triggers to 0, things will trigger us, the key in those moments is the 2 seconds rule.
 

Escapeandnevercomeback

Respected Member
It's so scary what this drug of all drugs does to us.
Recently I was talking about the effects of P and why it's so damn hard to get off of it. In the book "Your Brain on porn", it is aptly described that P starts at our existence. It's like overeating, we can't absolutely give eating up - in this case sexuality - but need to find a healthy, measured way.

After some wonderful days, yesterday's incident taught me once again that I have to be attentive to my feelings.
One of the biggest challenges for me is dealing with these negative feelings.

Even though it seems like cheating, I don't reset the counter (day 12). Feel free guys to write me what you think about it and also if you disagree, or if you notice that I'm lying to myself!
However, if such a situation occurs again, no matter how supposedly harmless, I see it as a relapse - even if it's not directly P I'm looking at.

I wish everyone much strength on your way today, be aware!
Yes, the first paragraph explains very well something that I've probably said as well around here at some point. Gabe Deem calls them superstimulus, an exaggerated version of a natural reward. Junk food and porn do this, they hijack our natural pathways that develop anyway whether we like it or not (feeding ourselves and reproducing). Of course, just like you said, the key is to have a healthy relationship with sex, sexuality and food. But, unfortunately, some of us started with porn at ages like 12 before we even knew wtf sex was and our brain got trained to see sex and women in an unhealthy way, I'm very positive that porn has made me obsessed with cheap sex done for my pleasure only. That's what goes through my head and I blame porn for this. I'm fighting to re-brainwash myself back to normal. But maybe it's more difficult now cause I'm single. I don't know what to say about this.

As for your concern, I would not reset my counter if I found a trigger by mistake and ran away from it in the first seconds. That would be the ideal reaction we must have. But, of course, we need to be careful. However, it's up to you anyway to do what helps you.
 

Blondie

Respected Member
Hey Awareness!
Even though it seems like cheating, I don't reset the counter (day 12). Feel free guys to write me what you think about it and also if you disagree, or if you notice that I'm lying to myself!
I'm a little confused, did you actually look at porn or just porn substitutes?

If it was porn subs, you don't have to reset. If it was porn thumbnails, that's a gray area for sure, but if it was actually porn, I would reset.

Either way, you get to decide what's too far or not.

Best brother.
It's so scary what this drug of all drugs does to us.
Indeed it is. But let's never forget, we have the power to quit!
 
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