A decade of delusions, Part 2
30 days no PMO retrospective
Insights.
Porn doesn't relax, it winds me up. O provides me calmness after P&M, and is only 'relaxing' in combination.
It's artificial stimulation and relief. PMO relaxes itself first and foremost, and none of the actual stressors in my life.
It makes me feel miserable because it creates a fake and disproportional 'need' that is only satisfied by more frequent and intense use. Eventually, that 'need' outgrows what is available and breeds frustration. It threatens to make me restless like an impatient child throwing a tantrum.
PMO is a vicious cycle. The shame and guilt inherent in its use carry me to my next relapse or binge. This facilitates poor sleep hygiene - which weakens my resistance to impulses - and indirectly affects my dietary habits - which stress on my health and mood -. Porn cannot be consumed and continues to exist in perpetuity.
It replaces parts of you, spreading like a metastasizing cancer until it feels fatal to remove.
PMO feels like Stockholm Syndrome. I am PMO's hostage and it is my abuser. It numbs my sensitivity to emotions and robs me the opportunity to learn from them. It blinds me to what requires processing, rejection or acceptance. In other words,
it keeps me emotionally locked in place.
PMO does not contribute to my processing of experiences. Although it makes me feel as if stress is relieved and I am relaxed, it only increases the bar. It enforces my tolerance to stress as opposed to removing it. Through PMO, I became more resilient to the discomfort of stress, guilt and shame. As a result, these stressors couldn't motivate me anymore. It became harder to be proactive and easier to procrastinate.
It also affected my ability to truly 'feel' or revel in positive emotions in much the same way. My lack of desire to 'belong more', my understanding of connecting socially, the comfort from physical embrace... These core human experiences were stunted by excessive use of PMO. It overshadowed or supplanted them all. I couldn't see these precious, human experiences for what they were.
Porn inhibited my growth and blinded me to normal, human experiences. I had learned to use PMO to cope with uncertainty and its discomfort.
Removing PMO from my life gave me invaluable opportunities to appreciate these normal, human experiences. Things like getting to know a potential partner, contemplating my present-past-future... Even letting negative emotions serve their purpose to drive me to action, like
shame or
guilt.
I 'feel' these now and let them push me in the right direction, away from PMO.
My resistance to impulses is proportional to the time I haven't exercised conscientiousness.
Meditation or breathing techniques and planning are as medicine to PMO urges. To forsake this medicine is to suffer the full extent of urges.
Urges are the sign of a lapse in conscientiousness. As the saying goes:
"Where there is smoke, there is fire.".
Personally, these urges indicate a lack of structure and/or unaddressed negative emotion. The latter either compacted and forgotten from long before or accumulated during the day.
Porn is not necessary to survive, although my brain tends to make me believe it is. In my mind, porn behaves like a companion that survives on my attention. It manipulates my desire for comfort and violates my inclination to show empathy. This disproportionate 'need' for artificial stimulation is a belief and not a fact. I have no duty towards engagement with PMO, my desire is based on a delusion. The interaction is not two-sided but one-sided. This is a self-isolating and depraved act, corrupting my brain with dependance. Porn does not provide anything substantial, instead it robs my time.
Through porn, I see people
bare naked. To see a person or depiction of one
bare, is to see someone
vulnerable. For all my teenage and adolescent years,
vulnerability from others and myself was non-existent. I wasn't aware I desired vulnerability with others and myself. I needed this 'deeper connection', and happened to find a deceptive abundance of this in porn.
Porn was there for me when I, myself and others were not.
My why's.
When PMO urges arise, I am battered by its clever deceptions. What do I say to them in response? Why do I reject PMO?
- I am taking back control over my life, choosing where to struggle.
- I am maintaining a healthy amount of confidence.
- I am reducing performance anxiety and becoming more confident.
- I am struggling less with dating, working out and supporting beneficial habits.
- I am spending less time in bed.
- I am spending less time on my phone and online.
- I am nurturing a place and moment of necessary reflection.
- I am regulating my emotional state to be in my favor.
- I am becoming more sensitive and accepting of my emotions, good and bad.
- I am reducing Alexithymia (emotional numbness).
- I am saving more energy to spend on goals big and small, such as working out and maintaining hard-earned motivation.
- I am giving my ADD one less stray impulse to distract me with.
- I am enabling healthy sleep hygiene and indirectly, healthy dietary habits.
- I am making space to untangle, address and resolve negative experiences and feelings.
- I am cultivating conscientiousness.
- I am contributing to my overall happiness and mood with the continuous 'glimmer-experience' of overcoming addiction.
- I am practicing proactivity.
- I am becoming more sociable.
- I am learning to tolerate boredom and recognizing opportunities for reflection therein.
- I am practicing resilience by suffering with purpose.
- I am cultivating normal sexual sensitivity and preferences.
- I am developing the efficacy of my frontal lobe (capacity to plan, organise, initiate, self-monitor and control one's responses).
- I am wasting less time.
- I am increasing my desire and opportunities for real, human comfort.
- I am building discipline.
- I am reducing complacency.
- I am re-shaping my self-perception.
- I am learning to love life, engaging with its wonderful and frightening complexity.
(Below I hyperlinked tags to the respective profiles as I couldn't tag each account for some reason.)
Thank you
@Chelly @Escapeandnevercomeback @Jos @Galatians51 @Simon2 @Trisquel @TypeN @Freerider @Jochen999 @Hunter_ @Androg @Blondie @strongfuture89 @MapleSyrup @NYC @PrometheusUnbound @the_mountain_goat @chap for taking the time to empathize, provide advice or otherwise show support. Even just reacting to posts makes me feel like there is value to this journal besides what it provides me. That sense of contribution helps me return or do the same for others.