facing my worst fears

OrangeSpider

Active Member
Hello to everyone. As most of you, I have struggled with this for over 20 years and want finally for something to change. I think sharing my struggles with other fellow strugglers might help me in that respect, so I would like to do that here.
 
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Numez

Guest
yes sharing struggles even to unknown strangers online can do wonders. share more.
 

OrangeSpider

Active Member
Day 2

I feel pretty determined today, talking allot to myself about not going down (the days I usually go down Im kinda tuned out with myself), also talking to God asking for help and strength to endure. I know that I need more than simply internal talk to make it, that why Im here, to discover these strategies; I have discovered a few already by reading other people journals. A few I read that made sense were being in tune with your feelings and discovering them even if they are painful, instead of pushing them away. Another one was talking to your "hornyness" as a means of deescalating it, not letting it lead, but you leading it in to control. Thanks to all of you that share these strategies and for just being honest and real.

Hoping that I can make it today, talk to you tomorrow.
 

OrangeSpider

Active Member
Day 3

Its so good to know I have been 36 hours away from the robotic and automatic groove of sitting at the computer, going to the usual sites, spending 45+minutes looking for "the right video" and masturbating to the changing colors pixels on the screen and then doing damage control (cleaning up and deleting the browsing history). Its frustrating to know that this routine highjacks my life every few hours or at most days. I want to be free of that! I just want to be like other people that just go through a day doing something else when they are alone, like going for a run, reading a book, taking a nap, doing some gardening, playing with their kids or praying. But I feel so impotent to do that, Im such a slave to the urges, they are my worst enemy, I fear them to much; and so as soon I hear them coming down the hall of my thoughts I bow down to quick and too easy. I need to learn to face them, to suffer the pain. That is why Im here, that is why Im reading others journals to get tips here and there, to hear stories of hope that tell me that I can face the fears and overcome them; that I can live a "normal life" without going to my boring and unchanging 45 + minutes routine.

For today I have made it to day 3 and Im going to celebrate that and be happy about it. When I think about it 3 days is not too much, but then again I think that If I keep on living the same way, 7, 14, 30, 90, 365 days will go by and I wont even notice it, I wont have even "lived them", I would have only roboticly and automatically wasted them. So Im not going to be discouraged by 3, Im happy that I have made it to 3 and that they have been 36 hours that I have been more conscious of myself and my thoughts , than the previous 120 days.
 

Pete McVries

Active Member
Hi OrangeSpider,

you say the urges get uncontrollable for you, so do you have a contigency plan once you feel cravnings and urges arise? Have you also identified your triggers? I think both of these things are very important and will help you in the long run because the earlier you manage to snap out of an imminent relapse the more succes you will have in doing so!

3 days is not much, that's right, but you'll be stacking the days soon enough. It's funny, the less you focus on your clean days the quicker they seem to be stacked. Doesn't make any sense logically but it feels that way for me. So all I want to say is, don't get impatient. Time is your friend. All you should focus on is staying clean and the healing will happen. It's like waiting for a bus at a station. The bus will come regardless whether you have looked at the timetable or not. That will have absolutely no effect on the arrival of the bus.

May I ask how porn affected you? Did you develop PIED or any other malfunction of that kind?

Take care!
 

OrangeSpider

Active Member
Day 4
I really hope I can continue adding these days up; what I mean is that I hope tomorrow I don't have to write Day 0.

It's funny, the less you focus on your clean days the quicker they seem to be stacked.

Maybe if I take this to heart I will be less worried about what I just said.

you say the urges get uncontrollable for you, so do you have a contingency plan once you feel cravnings and urges arise? Have you also identified your triggers? I think both of these things are very important and will help you in the long run because the earlier you manage to snap out of an imminent relapse the more succes you will have in doing so!

I don not have one, other than just talking to myself and getting up to do something else, which has not worked on the long run in the past. I will work on this. Any suggestions?

May I ask how porn affected you? Did you develop PIED or any other malfunction of that kind?

You may... I have had PIED in the past, some short episodes, when I was doing PMO for months a few times a day; around 2 years ago. I then tuned it down significantly, around once a week, and that did it for me.

But now I just want to get this thing out of my life. The feeling of having your life hijacked by PMO is sickening to me. I want to finally do something about it.

Today I have some work to do so I will probably be caught up in that and not focusing on PMO.

 

ImInControl

Active Member
Great job with day 4!! We all start from some where, and you are off with a good start being here and journaling. Pete mentioned contingency plan which I find is a good thing to have thought about.
Something like ?I will do x when I get aroused?... just the action of sitting and thinking about it will plant seeds and increase your odds of doing it.

Let me give you an example.. after 32 days pmo free or so, today was the most challenging day for me. However I ended my journal of by writing ?ill meditate now and shower?. Immediately I shut my computer down and did exactly that. I know for a fact I have written this plan down some time ago.. a plan to do xyz if I get urges/stress etc. Even if I had urges, and my body wanted the relief,, it led me to a another path of relief.. meditation. It helped. Still a tough day but I overcame that peak moment where normally I would with 100% pmo.

Try to think some strategys in what you could do instead.. something that distracts you. Pushups, squats, meditation, gaming, running, jumping jacks, standing upside down hehe I dunno what you like.. think outside the box.. something where your entire body knows this set rule.

Fx; IF at ANY point, I feel my companion try to get aroused : I will drop everything in my hands and do [action] right away.    Say you had a rule to do 30 pushups, x 5 times no matter what..  and you absolutely had to do them all before doing any other activity. That would make you more fit after a month and distract yiu from all that nonsense pixel stuff. At least for an hour or so.. if you feel urges again, you know what to do (again) and with enough soreness in your chest and arms,, your friend will forfet everything about making you horny again for that day... because he knows what you will do if he dares to wake up again.  But the rule is You MUST do the actuon every time.. no cheating.. he will find out when you do or when you skip.. and that one time where you are caught not following the rule, the action could go somewhere else (tension/relief of tension =pmo).

Im just thinking out loud here and writing what worked for me today. I meditated because I felt urges ans stress. I will implement it as a rule and see how it works. All the best
 

OrangeSpider

Active Member
Day 0

What can I say, yesterday an urge came so strong I didn't even think about preventing or anything, I just went automatically to P, and a few minutes later I was done.

Here we go again :(
 

ImInControl

Active Member
Good you are being honest, there is no shame in what you did, it was just a stepping stone. This is part of the journey, so don't be too hard on yourself. Find out what it was that triggered it from the beginning, what did you do / feel / what did you do next etc. Think deeply about it, (without judging!) then for next time do something else instead. 
Be strong and start again from today. Start small.
 

OrangeSpider

Active Member
Day 1
Im still bummed down about how I slipped and restarted. Im really not in the mood to go all out joyful and motivated to get back on the wagon so I will just keep it short. Right now Im just thinking about being honest. Maybe tomorrow I will do some more reflection on what happened and some prevention. I hope the best for all you rebooters out there.
 

ddmmyyyy

Member
Relapsing sucks. But it's part of the process. Kepp posting and don't beat yourself up, even if you fell in a hole right now. (I used to vanish from the board for weeks or months after a the end of streak. But that doesn't help of course...)
I still have not managed to be completely clean, but I remember how three or four days were a huge challenge in the beginning. And making it above 20 days once was incredible and also very exhausting. By now, being three to eight days clean in a row is normal for me and doesn't take any effort. The 19 days I have under my belt at the moment also felt like an easy accomplishment. I am still not completely free of porn, but my life has improved soo much already during the past 2 years. So, it's a process with ups and downs, but if you keep fighting you won't regret it and you will have gradual imporovement.

As you commented on fantasizing and meditation in my journal - I think the best way to not fantasize too much is to stay busy and plan things for your upcoming days. I know, sometimes easier said than done. If it happens, make sure you don't fantasize about porn scenarios.
Avoid checking out facebook / instagram / tinder profiles of girls. I did that a lot as a porn substitute. Also just having a look at the whatsapp profile pic of a past fling and thinking about it was a common starting point for me.

And I totally recommend meditation. It has an immediate effect to calm down your thoughts as well as a beneficial long time effect, which I did not experience myself up to now because I never managed to practice daily. But thats my next goal. I usually meditate in the morning just sitting in a comfortable position for 10-20 minutes with my eyes closed focusing on my breath. When thoughts cross my mind - what happens a lot of course - I acknowledge them, let them pass and get back to concentrate on breathing. There are different ways to meditate and a lot of resources on the web. Just try out some things to see what works best for you. Maybe mindful.org is a starting point.

Good luck man and keep fighting!

 

Pete McVries

Active Member
ddmmyyyy said:
Avoid checking out facebook / instagram / tinder profiles of girls. I did that a lot as a porn substitute. Also just having a look at the whatsapp profile pic of a past fling and thinking about it was a common starting point for me.

Great point! A lot of these social media/dating websites exactly work like porn. Swiping from profile to profile, dopamine shot after dopamine shot. Instagram is basically porn for the porn starved mind of a PMO addict. So if you are guilty of using these sites too much, do yourself a favor and stop it for a while. It'll help you immensely :)
 

OrangeSpider

Active Member
day 3/2
Yesterday was a GREAT day. I went away in my car, went to an open farm, then to a park, had lunch, shared with some friends, then came home and did some gardening. All day had my mind on other things and not even thought about POM.

Ive found out that not having discipline or a daily structure hurts me big time. Just going to the internet, FB, Twitter, Youtube, Twitch, Instagram, or whatever, and just surfing away, is very bad for me; its just an off ramp to POM. I tell myself it will help me get distracted, but its not good. I now am working on a daily routine of waking up early, doing exercise, meditating and then planning out my day and executing it. Any other recommendation on this?

I thought about adding to my "day identifier" at the top of each entry, a / with the number of the try Im actually doing. Example day 3/2, so day 3 of my second try since I started posting. I think it will help me keep a better track of where I am and what has happened along the way.

Hope you guys are doing well today!
 

Pete McVries

Active Member
Just some food for thought:

Many advise against counting days for the sole purpose of couting days. "Make the days count, don't count the days" is something you'll hear often. And it's definitely true, in my book. I count days though, so that others and myself can track positive/negative effects that happened during the reboot, It also gives me perspective. A few days ago I was recounting the times I had sex and then it dawned me that I only have sex since day X which was only a few weeks ago but felt like months ago in my flawed perception which was funny.

Perhaps, it can also be demotivating you, when you end being on day 1/20 and start thinking "here I go again, I'll fail sooner or later, it happened twenty times already...". You did the right thing already yesterday, when you filled your day with healthy activities which did well to you. That's what you are going to need in order to succeed. Sitting in front of you computer, counting the seconds until day 4 is the wrong way to go (I'm exaggerating of course and I'm not implying that you do something like that).

While it is true that you should only tackle one or two tasks at a time, rebooting is the time to implement healthy habits and change a few things. Perhaps, start getting your diet right if you tend to eat a lot of fast food. Maybe, join a gym to get shredded or build some muscle. Now is possibly the time to pick up an old hobby of you again that you lost along the way. Start getting out of your comfort zone slowly but steadily. There are gains to be made. ALL KINDS OF GAINS! ;D
 
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Lero

Guest
Good reflections, Pete. I like some of the things you said there.

The main reason why I've stopped counting the days was my mentality. This is an example: "Today is day 1 again, I've lost 15 days, fuck! It's gonna feel like forever until I reach day 15 again and maybe I fail along the way cause it's happened. Reaching 15 days is fucking hard!" I saw myself going back to the beginning after every relapse and it demotivated me like crazy. That's why I've changed the method. The idea is finding what works for you. This is an experimentation at this stage, to see how it's going but, so far, I like that it made me less obsessed with not breaking streaks, which is great because a bad state of mind is a facilitator for relapses and binges, for my situation.




 
L

Lero

Guest
OrangeSpider said:
I now am working on a daily routine of waking up early, doing exercise, meditating and then planning out my day and executing it

Well, staying away from PMO should give you more energy and you could use it for this instead of consuming it with PMO.
 

OrangeSpider

Active Member
day 4/2

Thanks for the input guys.

erhaps, it can also be demotivating you, when you end being on day 1/20 and start thinking "here I go again, I'll fail sooner or later, it happened twenty times already..."
I agree this can happen. I will probably quit this practice pretty shortly. But I still want to try it. I want to be aware of where I am and the time its taken me to get here. By ignoring it doesnt mean I havent walked through it.

Today Im pretty good. Had some nice intimacy yesterday with my wife. Today I received some bad news that can pull me down, but Im trying to focus on the positive. Extra carefulness today.


 

OrangeSpider

Active Member
day 5/2

Yesterday a went a little haywire on my diet and today I woke up a little late today, so Im out of my morning routine, but I hope to keep focused the rest of the day and that it doesn't hurt me or lead me to a pitfall.
 
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