Remington.22
Member
Hello friends & brethren,
Infrequent poster here but trying to get more active now that I'm walking in victory! Long/short = 53, married 24 years, dad of 3, addicted since a teen. Now 8+ months completely sober & this wretched addiction has lost ALL power over me. I posted http://legacy.rebootnation.org/index.php?topic=16402.0 not long ago & tonight offer a follow up. I hope & pray this will help many.
This battle is 100% with the mind. We want to get clean, we want to walk away....but we want to fail. Many have posted feeling "sad" about leaving porn. We can all relate. One of my biggest struggles was with the thought "I'm NEVER going to view porn again?! Ever??" That's a big pill. We realize we can't 'sort of' keep using, PMO once in a while, etc. The finality of "I can never, ever get another hit of that wonderfulness again" is damn intimidating. I've made it out, this will help those struggling:
Whether you're given to faith or not, "Everyman's Battle" by Fred Stoeker is fantastic:
https://books.google.com/books/about/Every_Man_s_Battle.html?id=462M-e4u0VAC
It is presented from a Christian worldview but whether you share that view or not it presents excellent, practical, "here's what you can do" tools -- one of those is changing brain programming Pavlovian style.
Our brain has associated the stimulus of viewing porn with a pleasure reward, often times an ejaculation. With a little effort its possible to reprogram by introducing a negative response to stimulus/thoughts we're trying to quell. We can watch a porn movie anytime we want. Just pull it up & let it run in the theater of the mind. Whether a fap is imminent or not we derive pleasure from the imaginations. One useful tool --& this does work-- is to wear a fairly hefty rubberband around the wrist; everytime an imaginations starts *THWACK*!! Grab that rubberband, pull it out as hard as you can & let it go so it snaps you right on that soft, delicate skin of the under-wrist. You've got to do it hard enough so you feel some discomfort. It needs to sting, to hurt a little. This may sound stupid or self-degrading (& maybe it is) but its the same thing as whacking a puppy on the nose with a rolled newspaper when he pees in the house. You are associating pain/discomfort with a specific activity.
If you're in despair, & I know from surfing the forum some today that some of you are, give this a try. What have you to lose? (Other than people wondering why you're wearing a rubberband for a bracelet.) As has been noted many times & as I personally attest - the key is getting that reboot done. I used to sit & watch videos in my mind all day every day. Fav porn stars, fav scenes, etc. Y'all know. At about 2 months of sobriety the damnedest thing happened one day - I was sitting in my office, it was 4:00 & suddenly I realized, "Wow! I haven't thought about porn ONCE all day today!!" Then it happened again the next day. And the next. Now I have to literally sit & pull up memories/scenes as opposed to them just popping in on their own as was once the case.
Where the mind leads the body follows. Get your mind under control & your genitals have no choice but to follow suit. This simple trick is one proven and very successful way of winning the battle in the brain. Shut that internal movie theater down, put that thing OUT OF BUSINESS....and you've won.
Infrequent poster here but trying to get more active now that I'm walking in victory! Long/short = 53, married 24 years, dad of 3, addicted since a teen. Now 8+ months completely sober & this wretched addiction has lost ALL power over me. I posted http://legacy.rebootnation.org/index.php?topic=16402.0 not long ago & tonight offer a follow up. I hope & pray this will help many.
This battle is 100% with the mind. We want to get clean, we want to walk away....but we want to fail. Many have posted feeling "sad" about leaving porn. We can all relate. One of my biggest struggles was with the thought "I'm NEVER going to view porn again?! Ever??" That's a big pill. We realize we can't 'sort of' keep using, PMO once in a while, etc. The finality of "I can never, ever get another hit of that wonderfulness again" is damn intimidating. I've made it out, this will help those struggling:
Whether you're given to faith or not, "Everyman's Battle" by Fred Stoeker is fantastic:
https://books.google.com/books/about/Every_Man_s_Battle.html?id=462M-e4u0VAC
It is presented from a Christian worldview but whether you share that view or not it presents excellent, practical, "here's what you can do" tools -- one of those is changing brain programming Pavlovian style.
Our brain has associated the stimulus of viewing porn with a pleasure reward, often times an ejaculation. With a little effort its possible to reprogram by introducing a negative response to stimulus/thoughts we're trying to quell. We can watch a porn movie anytime we want. Just pull it up & let it run in the theater of the mind. Whether a fap is imminent or not we derive pleasure from the imaginations. One useful tool --& this does work-- is to wear a fairly hefty rubberband around the wrist; everytime an imaginations starts *THWACK*!! Grab that rubberband, pull it out as hard as you can & let it go so it snaps you right on that soft, delicate skin of the under-wrist. You've got to do it hard enough so you feel some discomfort. It needs to sting, to hurt a little. This may sound stupid or self-degrading (& maybe it is) but its the same thing as whacking a puppy on the nose with a rolled newspaper when he pees in the house. You are associating pain/discomfort with a specific activity.
If you're in despair, & I know from surfing the forum some today that some of you are, give this a try. What have you to lose? (Other than people wondering why you're wearing a rubberband for a bracelet.) As has been noted many times & as I personally attest - the key is getting that reboot done. I used to sit & watch videos in my mind all day every day. Fav porn stars, fav scenes, etc. Y'all know. At about 2 months of sobriety the damnedest thing happened one day - I was sitting in my office, it was 4:00 & suddenly I realized, "Wow! I haven't thought about porn ONCE all day today!!" Then it happened again the next day. And the next. Now I have to literally sit & pull up memories/scenes as opposed to them just popping in on their own as was once the case.
Where the mind leads the body follows. Get your mind under control & your genitals have no choice but to follow suit. This simple trick is one proven and very successful way of winning the battle in the brain. Shut that internal movie theater down, put that thing OUT OF BUSINESS....and you've won.