The post relapse syndrome and staying away from sexual thoughts

I have reached the conclusion that I am shit at dealing with the post relapse despair and I tend to be very prone towards binges or just plain weak resolve after bungling up a good run.
I've also reached the conclusion that denying myself any hint of sexual thoughs, outside of when I'm actually interacting with a woman as there are just too many pathways leading back to the hole. The extreme cold turkey method seems to be the only one available to me at this present moment.
I'm interested if anyone knows of any tricks to get your mind back on track when you're thinking about sex. Mindfulness meditation for example. How to do it, are there any good guides, etc.
Also if anyone has any trick to avoiding that relapse binge and staying motivated when you're down, that be great.
Thank you in advance.

I recommend Jon Kabat-Zinn's books for introductions to mindfulness/meditation. He has some guided meditation audio tracks on youtube I believe.

Edit: Honestly, with regard to the negative feelings that come with binge-relapses: that is one of the primary reasons to not PMO in the first place. I too am totally shit in dealing with the despair you get after relapse. So, you need to figure out how to keep yourself off of the "waterslide" of relapse, because once you get on it it's hard to get off (and then you've just PMO'd 12 times in a weekend, and feel like shit). I recommend le_petit_moster's hack book for reprogramming your mind away from even beginning to give into thoughts of relapse, since once you start feeding them you you're on your way to relapse.

+1 for John Kabat-Zinn

The important thing to realise with the despair is that it's not really really. That is, the porn is amplifying it hugely in your mind. So you have a double-whammy. The problem and process of porn makes you despair more and feeling unable to cope drives you back to more porn. This is a vicious cycle.

But once you can really see that, breaking it becomes easy. The porn is not your crutch or friend, it's actually hurting you and causing more of these problems or making existing life problems that everyone has much worse.

It's not that you have weak resolve, it is that you actually are seeing it as something positive in your life because you get something out of it. But it isn't positive and you can get all those things in other ways without all the negative repercussions that come with porn.

I think take the pressure off yourself a bit. Get good at making space and time for you. Figure out why and when you get sexual thoughts and what triggers them. Is it actually stress? Unhappiness with parts of your life? Whatever it is. Build long term plans and work at those things. But everyone has bad days sometimes. It sucks but is part of life. Porn totally erodes your ability to cope with frankly normal life experiences. That may sound scary but it is the truth. So you need to get better at coping. Good news - you can do anything except porn/sex to cope (or other self destructive behaviour). Anything at all - whatever works, you make the rules man. Write poetry, paint artwork, shoot guns at the range, motorcross, pottery, anything at all. No limits!!

Let?s say you just broke down.
Calm down. Breathe in.
Do not make a drama. Do not write comments in a range of ?How fucked up I am!?
Three disastrous mistakes of give-up-ers

offaxis said:

+1 for John Kabat-Zinn

The important thing to realise with the despair is that it's not really really. That is, the porn is amplifying it hugely in your mind. So you have a double-whammy. The problem and process of porn makes you despair more and feeling unable to cope drives you back to more porn. This is a vicious cycle.

But once you can really see that, breaking it becomes easy. The porn is not your crutch or friend, it's actually hurting you and causing more of these problems or making existing life problems that everyone has much worse.

It's not that you have weak resolve, it is that you actually are seeing it as something positive in your life because you get something out of it. But it isn't positive and you can get all those things in other ways without all the negative repercussions that come with porn.

I think take the pressure off yourself a bit. Get good at making space and time for you. Figure out why and when you get sexual thoughts and what triggers them. Is it actually stress? Unhappiness with parts of your life? Whatever it is. Build long term plans and work at those things. But everyone has bad days sometimes. It sucks but is part of life. Porn totally erodes your ability to cope with frankly normal life experiences. That may sound scary but it is the truth. So you need to get better at coping. Good news - you can do anything except porn/sex to cope (or other self destructive behaviour). Anything at all - whatever works, you make the rules man. Write poetry, paint artwork, shoot guns at the range, motorcross, pottery, anything at all. No limits!!

Click to expand...

Thanks, but I do plan to start having sex once I'm rebooted. Is coping with sex really out of the question (once I've rebooted of course)?

I don't mean to avoid sex entirely.

Maybe I didn't explain well. What I mean was that in the past, I know that I've personally used porn (and to a lesser extent, sex, fantasy, masturbation etc.) as a means of escape or avoidance from problems in life to hide away behind. "There, there, you had an orgasm, it's all ok now." You can do that even with another person and you may see stories on here of people going to visit sex workers etc. That would not be a positive experience in my book. So what I mean is that it's not just about being very black-and-white or saying to yourself, "no porn, only real sex" - instead, for me anyway, it's about building up a good relationship with myself around healthy and positive sexual experiences, what they are and what they mean. That is, I want sex because I want a physical experience, shared pleasure and connection with someone deeply meaningful in my life who feels the same way. Otherwise, that may not be a positive experience for me. These are my own boundaries that I've worked out myself based on my experiences. It works for me but maybe doesn't work for you. All I wanted you to be aware of is that it can otherwise be easy to still get into negative patterns with sex despite staying clean of porn if you are not getting the root of the issues.

That may seem like a high bar to some people or even then people might think I wouldn't get much using such criteria. Perhaps not but the experiences I do have are very good ones that I am always going to be very pleased with and be memorable as a positive thing in my life. It is a filter for me to stop having poor sexual experiences otherwise. Just like you'd maybe figure out that you no longer want to work in a job where you're disrespected or underappreciated etc. It's the same basic principle - building a healthy relationship with myself.

I think a bit problem is that society tries to condition people via brainwashing that it's quantity (or even variety) over quality that matters in sex. It's a measure of your virility or success as man how many women you can bed etc. Personally, I think this a huge issue and creates a range of problems. While there's nothing wrong with gaining experience and finding out what you do and do like, what works and what does not - when that pursuit of quantity becomes the purpose in itself then I think it's gone too far and harms me.