For what it's worth I would recommend seeing a decent counsellor. Not that you have to of course but it will help tease out the issues external to your use. Another good thing is that even talking with others on here helps lift any sense of guilt or shame.
Shame is a very dangerous emotion. I hate it when the Church or some religious people invoke this for compliance. It's like being at school, missing a penalty and the teacher saying 'you let the team down today.' Shame will erode your sense of self-worth, something already possibly quite low when we all PMO. Then it will lead to guilt and then we are back on the good old tread mill trying assuage the guilt and shame with more of the old PMO! So I never buy into it...Not even when some try and invoke it through their idea of God. It's a sickness others seek to infect you with to either get your compliance or make themselves feel powerful.
It's hard doing the old cold turkey here! I've tried and failed,tried and failed, until the pattern was so common I could have made it into a wall paper design! One of those repeating ones that just draws the eye round and round. What I will say though is it's easier to stop when you really read the part that is hurting in you, the part that is DRIVING you to 'chase the dragon' or shuffle the knuckle.
As I've said before, sadly I let myself become trapped in a relationship with a highly abusive Ex Wife. It hardly surprises me that my PMOS were to do with me being pained and abused. Now that won't totally relate to her, other stuff made me prone to that anyway, but once I'd seen objectively though this FANTASTIC counsellor (could not afford them now of course) that I was working out my anger at my wife's abuse through this stuff, it was easier to just control it, get a handle on it...
In fact, at the end of our relationship I found myself screaming things at her that I had never screamed before! Suddenly she finally got the brunt of all my anger stored up against her over eighteen years. The look in her eyes showed she got the point and it showed her the damage she had done to another human being. Sure I was not innocent, it takes two married hands to clap (only one to M in PMO though) Yet, I will honestly say that since getting engaged now nearly three years ago, the absence of that frustrated anger, has been a reason for me hardly to PMO. My wonderful partner knows I PMO and would not stop me but actually because I don't feel somehow 'forced to stop' but another, I honestly hardly bother at all these days. Before it was as if the Wife were holding me responsible, somehow accountable to her and porn was a child like way of giving her the two fingers!
In a odd sort of way porn does appeal to that inner child. Remember being a kid and throwing your toys out of the pram, screaming, shouting, stamping your feet for simple attention, well in a way PMO is doing all those things in an adult persona. I guess you coined just as easily go and shout at cars on the Motorway and wait for the police but no fun when it's cold, wye and miserable!
Stick with it my main man and always feel free to pass me on any tips. Now I'm off to listen to Mr IVOR BIGUN and the Winker Song...I think that's how YOUTUBE spell it anyway!
