The start of the road 06/25! Reread this in 3,6,9,12 months from now.

[tenjyou]

Day 33:

I have come to realize that taking care of little ones is a good way to kind of calm the mind down and focus more on life rather than PMO. At least for me that is... I've been around here taking care of my nephew and just holding onto him and making sure he is resting and exercising and sleeping well not only takes up a lot of the day, but also brings me a lot of joy. Seeing him be so well behaved when I am holding onto him or watching him is a lot of fun for me. I'm kind of glad that I took the time out to come here and be with family, not just for the sake of hoping that family interaction would decrease my urges to PMO, but also just to make sure my nephew is doing well and that my brother and his wife were not too stressed out or exhausted from being too over worked.

As for the events that went on today, nothing much... aside from watching the kid, helping to take the trash to the dump, taking a few business calls... There have been no real major urges. I have slowly been working on my scanning and staring. I was able to not stare after noticing a few girls in short shorts today which is much improved over myself previously. I saw them out of the corner of my eye, and told myself "My self control is more important than any urges. I do not let these urges have power over me" and after that forced myself to keep looking ahead and ignored them. Mentally I could hear the dialogue in my head saying she could have a gorgeous face as well? or those legs might not be as big as you think... but I had to literally talk to myself to tell myself no. Just mentally thinking no wasn't doing me any good, but once I heard myself say it it made a difference.

Anyways that's about it for today... nothing else crazy happened... Write to ya all tomorrow. Keep up the good work! And if you fall off, it's ok, just get back up immediately. Worst thing you can do is binge on that addiction after falling.

 

[akpal2]

@akpal2

Thanks! It's something that I never used to have but after doing a lot of qi gong classes and learning different breathing techniques it's become quite a bit easier telling when my body is feeling different... for the mental stuff, I can honestly only attribute that to the insights I've gained from no PMO for the past month and really focusing on what I need to do to lead a more healthy productive life, and of course all the community help and information out there. When I feel myself getting an urge to go do something I have written out a plan of action that I always try to follow.

For example:
For me I used to wake up and just go straight to PMO to start the day. It was something that I had incredible difficulty avoiding because even if I forced myself to not do any PMO I still thought about it all morning. I had to create a response in my mind to the urge. After thinking about that habit, I woke up the next morning and remembered that feeling. Whenever I had that feeling in the morning, I would hop into an ice cold shower and really stand under the downpour of water. The water was so cold I could feel my hands get numb when I washed my hair. I had to shock myself so much that I would forget about the PMO that morning. That plan of action has really helped when I felt that urge come on, because I had steps to follow in case something triggered my urges to PMO.

Not sure if that will help you or not, but regardless what you guys decide I know you all can change your thoughts and behaviors if you've put your mind into it!

Day 32:
Woke up with again semi hard morning wood! I was really stoked! Felt like i was starting to see the results of what I've been working on for the past month. It feels great! Had to bend over the toilet to pee inside the toilet.  The rest of the day was more uneventful. I had to take care of my nephew as he was .. yelling and tired... fack... I'm falling asleep... I'll come edit this when I wake up haha... It was a lot of putting myself first. I was studying Chinese and Japanese in the morning and practicing harmonica in the afternoon, early evening I was on the phone dealing with business calls from the west coast, and then came on here.

This is fantastic. It seems like you are achieving a lot more with PMO out of the way Do you feel more productive now after moving away from this habit (or at least trying to move away?)

 

[tenjyou]

@akpal2
tldr below...

It's weird... I honestly am not sure if these results are due to me stopping this habit, or me forcing myself to learn and do new things that as a result have helped me deal with with this habit... for example the qi gong and the martial arts. They have been something that I have wanted to do for the past like 10 years, but never pushed myself out the door. After making a promise to myself to stop this habit and do things I have wanted to learn, I have slowly been learning about my body... maybe a combination of both? I definitely am more productive now because I have a lot more time to do things.

I believe that has to do with my firm decision to make my life better, which included stopping the PMO. I realized from before that, for me, the main reason for change cannot be about the PMO... or rather it can... but that needs to slowly transition away from it to how do I make my life better. In my case I started this journey because of the PIED. The first week for me, I kept reminding myself everytime I had thoughts of PMO that if I kept this up, my ED would continue and would NEVER experience the enjoyment of sex with a woman again. Like I would literally tell myself and remind myself hourly to preemptively stop the urges. I would say to myself that I want to have sex again, I want to enjoy having sex again and not feel anxious or worried about some stupid ED getting in the way of that.

That helped me with the urges, but I noticed that since I kept thinking about NOT doing PMO, that PMO was always on my mind. So I started thinking less about how to stop the urges, and just more on what do I want to do with my time and my life. I started making a list of all the things I wanted to do. Good god the list was short, but it was more of a chore at first to push myself to do those activities. It was like my physical body wanted to stay at home near the computer so that I had the opportunity to PMO whenever, but after forcing myself out of the house and as I started to do those activities outside of home more, the PMO thoughts didn't even really come to mind.

/**********
TLDR: Yes lol. It was not easy as I was so used to staying at home by the computer to access PMO, that it was hard to start achieving more, but once I started pushing myself to do those things it became easier.
*******/

Day 33:
Today was pretty much all business... literally spent the majority of the day reading this 280 page franchise disclosure document. Facking laywer speak... It feels like a foreign language trying to dis cipher the exact meaning from these things... I fell asleep like 15 times while reading this darn document and only have gotten through like 80 pages of it.... Ended up calling a franchise lawyer to see how much it would cost for them to look at it and discuss with me what is in it... $800... holy crap... I'm beginning to think that lawyers literally made these kinds of documents to give themselves work and a job.

As for the PMO, there was very little urges today... the thoughts of PMO or going to check out instagram were lingering around, but the thoughts are not strong and kinda just sit around there in my head. Like they don't have the power to stop me from doing my daily activities now, but are more just there to tempt me back. Its been a lot easier just saying no to them. That's about it for today... fell asleep in the middle of writing this haha... ended up taking a 2 hour nap and finished this up. Gonna sleep for reals now. I'll see you guys / gals... er write to you all later.

 

[tenjyou]

Day 34:

So can't say much about today... had a lot of thoughts flowing through my head... when things aren't really going my way in regards to the business I'm looking at, it gets me frustrated and I start thinking about fantasies... for some reason its w... blah... lol fell asleep again... So yesterday I was having some continuous thoughts on fantasies. Like they would not go away with the normal push them out of my thoughts, so I ended up playing a couple of games to keep my mind off of it. I'm also slowly getting better at not staring a girls outside... I still end up looking or noticing them, but I'm doing quite a bit better at not relooking, or not scanning the surroundings for them.

 

[akpal2]

fantastic. I think leaving PMO and making a conscious effort to stay away from it does leave us with a a lot of extra time which was wasted earlier thinking about finding the perfect porn scne.

 

[tenjyou]

@akpal2

haha yeah... I totally agree with that. It feels like it's solely based on how badly you want to stop this addiction and change the way you live your life.

Day 35:

So today was interesting. No water in the house... no showers, no toilets were working, no sinks... Thankfully I was busy thinking of other things so I didn't really worry too much about that but still... kinda crazy day. I will say that the PMO thoughts have never really gone away... it's like it's just lurking in the back of my mind waiting for my resolve to get weaker. Some days I can really feel my brain wanting me to do read some crazy fantasy about it, or just cave and watch some porn vid... other days I don't feel it at all. It's a weird sensation and thought chain that goes through my head.

 

[tenjyou]

Day 36:

So again... I hear that call in my mind to PMO.... or not even MO just watch some P... but now it's relatively easy to push aside those thoughts. I just tell myself no, and move onto other things. One thing I will say that I've been having to deal with lately is frustration and how that is a challenge to me. So I guess since before I can remember I guess I've been dealing with stress in a very non healthy way. Whenever I would get stressed, I would push those thoughts that annoyed me aside and would douse myself with some porn and jerk off till I was subdued and feeling satiated. Looking back on it now, I lived a very subdued life. I wasn't really living, it was more like I was passing the days along. I mean I still did some outrageous and crazy things, but the majority of everyday life was very repressed. very muted. '

Now that I cannot just jerk my stresses away, and having to internalize emotions and let them run their course through my body, my life has taken a toll for the more stressful. It's become more of a pain to deal with these feelings. I cannot just jerk off and feel more content, but instead now I am feeling the full effects of stress and of frustration and anger. Many incidents today I had to take a lesson I learned from the book "How to make friends and influence people" by Dale Carnegie and put it into practice. In the chapter talking about Lincoln, how you really think about what you're saying before you actually say it, I had to swallow down many angry thoughts that were popping into my head. I realized later after thinking about the situation again that I was misunderstanding so it felt good to have done the right now, but nevertheless I still had these bad thoughts in my head that I was very tempted to just M/O and not worry about it anymore.

As I go further along in this journey I've been starting to wonder if these feelings will ever go away. Will I ever get to the point where these thoughts just never even occur to me to do. It almost seems as if I have to have amnesia in order to forget that PMO exists. Like currently PMO is not an option for me, but it pops its ugly head up when I am feeling lonely, or depressed, or frustrated, or bored, trying to entice me to go back to it. I never do, but that darn calling is still there.

Most of the time it happens like everyone else does... right before bed. As I sit alone in a dark room, trying to get myself to sleep. Maybe I'll put some relaxing music in my room before I head off to sleep.

 

[tenjyou]

Day 37:

As my vacation time dwindles down and I've got a week left here, I realize that my thoughts are slowly drifting back to all sorts of things. That siren song of PMO and porn fantasies are calling to me. I guess I need to keep myself busier as I am spending less and less time with my nephew. He is now more constantly being taken care of by his mother now which leaves me with very little to do around the house. How to keep myself occupied... The problem is before I used to play the harmonica outside, but lately it's been raining like crazy and I can't play inside due to the baby being asleep or what have you, anyways... Just a few thoughts of mine here. I see why they say the first few weeks are strong for everyone and that the real start of recovery begins after the fourth week....

 

[tenjyou]

Day 38:

So my journal entries are looking rather repetitive... although in my defense the days are rather similar in nature.... wake up, take care of the nephew, visit bro, spend time with sis in law... the only difference currently is how often i spend with each. I have the same thoughts as yesterday... albeit not as intense of cravings or urges to PMO, but still there. Less though... What to do... honestly not sure... I guess just keep myself busy for now. Work on those steps of improvement from the recoverynation website... I feel like I've reached a plateau and I'm stuck at this level right now unable to progress further towards my goal till this plateau is gone. Not sure what to do to fix that, but I'll keep thinking about it.

 

[tenjyou]

Day 39:

So not much to write here... I've been way too busy with conference calls and taking care of the nephew to even think or care about PMO lol... which i guess is a good thing lol. Anyways just wanted to be here to report and keep this good habit in place... Need to sleep as I have more calls to make tomorrow.

 

[tenjyou]

Day 40:

Kept extremely busy today. Had multiple phone calls to deal with, nephew watching, cooking food, researching franchises, researching hiring franchise lawyers...Nothing really in the PMO side of things... Although I did end up clicking a link one of my friends sent which lead me to a gallery of images of a model. I was a bit pissed off at myself for clicking the link and closed it.

One of the things that's been on my mind has less to do with PMO, and more to do with the way we all grow up. **I realize that this is going to make me sound rather childish haha but it's something I spent a good amount of time thinking about today**
I grew up watching disney movies. A prince coming along to rescue a princess, and it feels as if somehow that kind of scenario is what we try to emulate and achieve in real life. As unrealistic as it is, it feels like as I grew older this ideal has made me grow to be a bit more jaded in regards to a love life. Realizing that most women aren't like the women you see in the stories. They aren't have their own agendas and most won't give you the time of day. I feel like I need to reframe my way of thinking and my expectations when it comes to relationships. Since I was young to practically now haha I have had these ideals that were based off of fantasy and stories. But seeing as how I have practically zero experience with relationships, the only thing I can base my expectations on are these hopes of mine which are faulty. Meh... more food for thought I guess... something I will need to keep coming back to, to re-evaluate.

Peace guys.

 

[tenjyou]

Day 41:

So I don't know about the rest of you, but it's getting a bit harder now... after a month I thought things would be getting easier. Understatement of the year lol. While it is still easy to tell myself not to do any PMO, the fact that the softcore pmo fantasies, and issues suddenly started popping up more frequently with stronger ties. I noticed myself indulging in these for a few seconds longer than normal before stopping myself. Because of that I started to question my actual resolve, but then realized that it does no good playing the blame game. Thus I told myself hey, you botched up a bit. It happens, and that is fine. Just remember the reason you are doing all this for.

and so I find myself here. Taking a reread of my very first long f*cking post. Sometimes it does you good reading about your own frustration to remind you why you are doing this.

 

[tenjyou]

Day 42:
Days with no P: 0

Well damn the news... lol I dun f*cked up. Heard about kotaku doing their click bait articles and ended up reading something I shouldn't have. Which then lead me to look up some porn. Man makes me a rather sad now that I've kinda woken up from that. I just watched a minute of one video and then literally woke and and was like wtf am I doing, no M, and no O just watching... but damn... that was unfortunate.... Well life goes on. Just thought i'd put this up here...
Oh and for those who are reading.. the day counter is not for how many days without, but more how many days since the start of my journey.

If need be, I'll make a counter for the days with no P.

Anyways, good luck to you all! I know I'll need it =\ Tomorrow is another day, and things will be ok... hopefully ~_~

 

[tenjyou]

Day 43:
Days with no P: 1

So after a relapse it's weird how I just don't have that urge to look at P again. It's probably the feeling of being satiated and subdued but today I did not feel the need to look at P at all. Maybe because it's day 1 again and that initial drive is kicking up again, but only time will tell. As for now I've been busy flying all day. Got back to the airport and the family came and picked me up. Got into an argument with my dad. Ended with a lot of shit talking from my dad's side as usual. A lot of degradation... but that's nothing new. But he said one thing... normally never pisses me off but today he was mumbling to himself loud enough for me to hear and called me fucking disgrace. (I know... wah wah wah stop being a cry baby... It normally doesn't bother me but today it just really set me off). That really pissed me off, but thankfully my mom was there and calmed me down. All that lead to the urge to want to beat the shit out of something and then go PMO, but that urge has passed and I'm a bit more clear headed now. Time for bed.

 

[tenjyou]

Day 44:
Days with no P: 2

So getting back into the grind of things. Just got back home last night and today had multiple meetings to go over business plans, financial forecasts, setting up an LLC, all that good stuff. Been getting better at the staring aspect of this, where I still notice a hot girl, but am actively not pursuing another look.

So as for the rest of things, nothing major... slowly getting back into exercising. Need to work on eating right again. That's about it for me. Basically just got home, no real time to do anything but post a quick recap of today before I head to sleep. Got more stuff to do early tomorrow so need to get some rest.

See you guys/ gals tomorrow.

 

[tenjyou]

Day 45:
Days with no P:3

So today was a day to get back into the swing of things. Exercising in the morning, helping parents with moving furniture around, doing some reading on business stuff, playing games with cousin in attempt to get better. Wrote down in my journal some of the items I need to work on. Also ended up consoling a friend who just had a break-up with her bf. All in all a pretty busy day. Thankfully no real major urges to speak of... In the morning I had a strong desire to watch some P, but having parents that needed help moving stuff was in my favor and I ended up dismissing those thoughts in order to help my parents move things.

Time for me to start working out. Today is bi's tri's and forearms. See you all tomorrow!

 

[tenjyou]

Day 47:
Days with no P:0

So a bit ticked off at myself... I forgot to write an entry last night and ended up getting back into old habits this morning. Actually not a little ticked off... I'm really pissed at myself... I ended up smackin myself a few times and realized it wasn't helping so just vented my anger by doing push ups and pull ups. I actually really didn't feel like coming on here to write, but I NEED to get myself back into holding myself accountable, and with this at least every day, I can be actively reminding myself of the things I need to focus on, and can kind of narrow down my thought processes... Be honest with myself here since it's the internet. None of you really know me and I don't know any of you, but we are all going through the same damn thing. It sucks to PMO. And we all have gone through the same situations / the same feelings / same struggles so there is little to no judgement here. Anyways still pissed... will talk with you all tomorrow.

 

[tenjyou]

Day 48:
Days with no PMO: 1

So it's good to get back and focus on what I gotta do. Just clear my head, focus on my business and my friends. One thing that is keeping me busy is the research. Trying to figure out the new trends and what will be popular so as to incorporate all that into my store. There are more important things in life than that and I literally HAVE TO FORCE myself to do those important things. It's like my body has become too accustom to laziness and doing things that I want to do is a chore... which isn't right. It's weird but it's similar to how a lot of ppl can't get their ass out of the house to go to the gym, but if they get themselves there, then they have a great workout. I just need to start forcing myself to do the things I want to learn how to do.

I'm really bad with schedules, but I will start writing a schedule for the day every morning and see how that goes... maybe I'll start by writing it here... who knows... we'll see how many things I can get accomplished

 

[David Albert]

Hey man, it's important that you figure out why the relapses happened and avoid that path in the future. We have many paths/cues for PMO so eliminating them, even one by one, is crucial in our recovery. So instead of beating yourself up for falling temporarily off the wagon, analyze, analyze and then act accordingly to eliminate the bad stuff which led to PMO.

Enjoyed reading your original post, it was refreshing  Other than that it sounds to me like you're doing more abstaining than actual recovering, if you allow me to say so. If you haven't already, I suggest you read the underdog's post on this matter, it's a long post but very interesting.

http://www.yourbrainrebalanced.com/index.php?topic=15558.0

Keep going man. Eliminate the mistakes and keep going, the journey is long 

 

[tenjyou]

@David Albert
Appreciate the advice! On some days it really does feel like abstaining, on others it's more trying to get myself out of the bad habit of being lazy, and doing things the easy and not productive way. To be honest I did read underdogs post early on into my recovery and it really did make sense. Enough so that I had started a thread on recoverynation that I realize now I have been neglecting >_>... Getting over an addiction is not about framing your mind  to be like I need to prevent myself from doing this, but rather I have these more important important things in my life that I need to focus on. Like my life consists of real people, real goals that I have been lazy in going after and that laziness changed and evolved into the porn addiction I have today.

I also have been doing a lot of reflecting to figure out what the hell was the cause. I'm not entirely sure as it seems like there were multiple causes but basically I gotta cut out news of all forms unless it comes from an actual person telling me. I just cannot go to news sites online, can't listen to the radio. I've got podcasts I've downloaded, audio books, and motivational CD's that I listen to in the car now.

What Underdog posted is really what I am currently pushing to the front of my mind each day. I've went out and bought a whiteboard and every morning I'm writing out things I HAVE to do by the end of the day. For example today it was

Wake up: Qi gong exercises to help wake up and after that meditate for 15 minutes.
Morning: I need to practice 30 minutes of harmonica drills.
Afternoon: I need to take an hour for Chinese vocab practice / learning and an hour for Japanese vocab learning.
Evening: Drive to grandpa's house to have dinner with the family
Late evening before midnight: Review financial documents and think of questions that I can ask the CEO of the franchise on Tuesday.

While I missed an hour of Japanese today due to trying to fix my aunts computer, it was more or less a productive day doing things that I have set goals to

I really appreciate the point out that I was doing more abstaining. It was something that didn't really cross my mind in the last few days. As I thought about it more over the past few hours I have come to realize that at least for me after relapse I do have a need to focus on abstaining. The abstaining is so that I can get some semblence of control over the urges. Without that I honestly cannot focus... right now urges hit, if I don't literally focus my attention on not PMO'ing, doing what I can to not I have ended up doing it like what happened a couple of days ago. I believed that after falling off the horse I could just get right back on and continue, but it really wasn't like that at all... it was like a bully dragging me down back to his level and beating the crap out of me with experience. First for me get some semblance of control back in my life. Focus on doing things I want to accomplish and get myself doing those things and not just think about doing those things.

Again thanks David for the encouragement and advice. I'll probably start rereading underdogs post once a month to remind me of what actual recovery is... My head might have gotten too inflated when I realized I could go a month, that I started thinking more about the numbers and not about my recovery.