Freedom by any means necessary...

Sir_Cooms

Sir_Cooms

Active Member
iwander said:
Thank you for sharing about your state! 67 days days is impressive. Nice that you have determination and clear goal
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Thanks for stopping by, @iwander. I hope (and trust) that my goal isn't a mirage and I will actually get somewhere in the end. I am 100% sure I will be in a better place by the 100th day, but I am not as sure about what specific aspect of my mental health will improve. Maybe my motivation, willpower and general sense of peace will get better, but my OCD symptoms will still persist. I don't know, but I'll keep pushing through...
 
Sir_Cooms

Sir_Cooms

Active Member
Day 6 - No PMO:

Another mostly uneventful day. I didn't have any serious urges to report on. My mental health is still not doing too well unfortunately. As I mentioned on yesterday's entry, I don't expect to see any improvement until a few weeks in. The number 1 priority right now is to survive without a relapse. Tomorrow is tomorrow's problem. I'll post the day 7 entry in a bit as today is actually day 7.
 
Sir_Cooms

Sir_Cooms

Active Member
Day 7 - No PMO:

This one really has to work. Not because I'm tired of relapsing (which I am), but because my mental health is not as resilient as it was just a few months ago. I'm on the verge of cracking every day I continue with this journey. A relapse at this time in my life can have very negative consequences. I honestly believe I'm at a stage of my life where the pain of relapse is genuinely greater than the pleasure I get from PMO. In the past I would tell myself this in the hopes of staying clean, but a degree of 'tricking myself' into believing it was in order. Now, every moment of the day I am reminded of how much pain I caused myself by not straightening out sooner. I don't mean in the sense of getting a 'clean streak', but in the sense of continuing to brush my worsening mental health under the carpet because I didn't want to deal with the pain.

It feels like I no longer have recourse in anything but going through this. This is a message for my future self: If you ever think about relapsing and 'just starting over', remember that I am now paying the debt for all the times in the past I decided to delay recovery 'after this one'. Even the seemingly small relapses are part of this problem. There is no room for error anymore. I am really on the edge and will have to make better choices going forward.
 
Sir_Cooms

Sir_Cooms

Active Member
Day 8 - No PMO:

My mood was still in a decline today. I try to keep a positive mindset but I am finding it difficult sometimes. My BDD and OCD is getting worse and I am struggling to finish mundane tasks. Mental health problems are very crippling and they cause me to question everything about my existence.

The other noteworthy thing is I keep fantasizing about women I see on the street. This usually happens at this point in my streak. Maybe it's due to the testosterone peaking around the 7-day mark? I'm not sure, but either way, it's good to spot these patterns because it makes it easier to anticipate what comes next. Around day ten, things will get really challenging, and I will have to face the biggest hurdle, possibly in my journey. I speak a lot about day 10 - 18 being the 'danger zone', but I rarely have a proper plan for when that week comes around. For now my plan is never to be home alone. If I get urges, I follow the urge-surfing-push ups-running protocol that helps me distance myself from the urge.
 
Androg

Androg

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Sir_Cooms said:
Day 8 - No PMO:

My mood was still in a decline today. I try to keep a positive mindset but I am finding it difficult sometimes. My BDD and OCD is getting worse and I am struggling to finish mundane tasks. Mental health problems are very crippling and they cause me to question everything about my existence.

The other noteworthy thing is I keep fantasizing about women I see on the street. This usually happens at this point in my streak. Maybe it's due to the testosterone peaking around the 7-day mark? I'm not sure, but either way, it's good to spot these patterns because it makes it easier to anticipate what comes next. Around day ten, things will get really challenging, and I will have to face the biggest hurdle, possibly in my journey. I speak a lot about day 10 - 18 being the 'danger zone', but I rarely have a proper plan for when that week comes around. For now my plan is never to be home alone. If I get urges, I follow the urge-surfing-push ups-running protocol that helps me distance myself from the urge.
Click to expand...
Hope things ease up soon.
 
Sir_Cooms

Sir_Cooms

Active Member
Day 9 - No PMO:

I'm back at nine days after my last relapse. Going through a bit of a rough patch as of late, but hanging in there. Today has mostly been BDD-free, so I am grateful for that. I'm trying a mindset shift and also trying to reframe my OCD thoughts so that ruminations don't consume me.

I didn't have a lot of urges lately, but I'm wondering if it's time to cut back on Youtube and Netflix, as they seem to be triggering me. Obviously they come in handy when I need to kill time or when I'm bored, which (boredom) also happens to be a major trigger. I wonder if I should take up some more beneficial hobbies. I'm only relaxed with those 'vices' during the early part of my reboots because I try not to stress my brain with too much dopamine starvation. But I'm not sure I'm getting the benefit out of YT and Netflix anymore. I don't use social media at all, so that's a plus. I play video games from time to time but haven't done so in a few weeks and plan to keep it that way for now.

Other than that, all looks good for tomorrow. Entering the danger zone now so will try to be extra careful, especially around the sneaky type urges. I'm gonna try to come up with ways to keep myself occupied. I'm thinking of staying with family out of state for a while as a change of environment.
 
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Sir_Cooms

Sir_Cooms

Active Member
Day 10 - No PMO:

It's interesting that I bounced back relatively quickly after my last relapse. Usually I take about 2 weeks of bingeing after a relapse before I reach double digits again. This time I only relapsed for a couple of days and just got back to it. Anyways, just an interesting observation I noted as I just now made surpassed my last streak. I have a somewhat of a busy week ahead of me so that'll keep me occupied for the remainder of the danger zone.

I experienced some urges today as I am currently home alone after my wife had to be somewhere. I wasn't expecting to be home alone, otherwise I would have tried to prepare in advance, given how much of a trigger it is. On the plus side, I decided to just sit with my urges as I have work to do and leaving the house would be tricky at short notice. It worked, although I'm getting some flashbacks that I'm trying to work around. Unfortunately, my BDD/OCD symptoms are not giving me a break. Although, I think it is actually slightly better than when I first started this streak. I expect some hard days ahead. I must stick to the path no matter what happens.
 
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