Getting back to life

jkkk

Well-Known Member
Hey All,

I wanted to introduce myself, tell you my story and ask for your help and support.

I am 27 years old, I started using P when I was around 10 years old, I found out that is a problem when I was about 21 years old and since 4 years I am fighting for a better life.

I was a heavy user. I remember getting back from middle school and high school and spending my whole afternoon doing PMO.

I started working with my addiction 4 years ago. Difficult to say what was the trigger to stop, but as you see from the above timeline, I knew for some time that something was wrong with me. I remember very well the time when I told myself that I want to stop. It coincided with a very demanding and stressful time for me. It was the end of my student exchange in another country. I was taking part in a student competition there and I was very much into it. Not everything went according to my plan with the competition and so difficult experience from that went together with the withdrawal. And the withdrawal was an absolute nigthmare, I had an absolutely wrecking withdrawal that ruined all my summer and actually ruined some of my career plans (it was a time when students like me then used to take up internships - I had a panic attack on the first day of my internship and withdrew altogether).

I managed to stay away from PMO for a very long time. During these 4 years it happened that I viewed P, but it never ballooned to a full relapse. They were one-offs, usually stopped quickly and took time to get back to my real self. So from P's perspective, I can say that my recovery was quite a success.

Or at least I thought so. What I got into after fighting P was essentially quite the same, even if not so extreme ? it was all kinds of artificial stimulation: staring at women in public places, watching women in bikini's in the net, looking up celebrities' pics in the net, perusing facebook accounts while looking for pics of girls. It?s not that I got into that straight away after I started ?my rehab?, it happened gradually.

I think there was a period when I was really clean, just after I started fighting. But then, with time, the addiction stroke back with all the rationalizations (like ?viewing pics is nothing bad?, or ?spotting girls is pretty normal ? I mean everyone does it, don?t they??) and this was where I had difficulties to cope.

Nor was the intensity high, but it did affect me, it took away the focus. And of course those situations almost inevitably lead to browsing P in the. So to me it really turned out that quitting litterally PMO and that ?P? in itself extends much further than I ever thought.

I?m not saying to discourage any of you guys out there, who are looking for girlfriends, from being attracted and investing genuine interest in contacts with women.

But my situation was kind of different ? I had a girlfriend (she is now my wife), my high-school sweetheart (one sided this one was in high-shool, though) around. A woman I love. A beautiful woman. Still, that didn?t stop me from looking around and at the same time being quite constantly dissatisfied with her, mainly from a sexual point of view (?why couldn?t she have more up front, that would be really cool? ? I spent significant amount of time browsing plastic surgery sites). Many times I had been asking myself, why am I comparing her all the time to other girls, in the real life, or in the Internet or wherever.

Most of my struggles with PMO the problems came at a time where I started having problems with managing my emotions. And the last few years have been an eventful and stressful period in life, as I guess many guys at this age/stage in life would agree: my first steps at work after completing university, relationship with my girlfriend, moving out from my parents. I sometimes managed to speak about my emotions, concentrate on them, talk about them to friends and people at work. But it did not always work. Nor was I always dedicated to look out and ask for help.

I went to therapy half a year after I decided to start fighting addiction and I?ve been now seeing my therapist week in, week out, for more than 3.5 years now.

Therapy gave me a lot ? I?ve been able to get through many ?legacy? and childhood issues, mainly dealing with being raised in a very demanding family, where delivering perfection was treated as a standard. I started feeling my emotions, being in a contact with myself those bad ones as well and living with them. We talked through many, many issues and I read ?Don?t call it love? of Patrick Carnes a few times (I recommend, in my opinion a good read about some basics of the addiction and recovery).

Nevertheless, most of the slip-ups happened during the therapy iteself. I guess it just goes to show that the nature of the addiction is really nasty and it bites even if you do try to ?the right things?.

I also had issues getting back to a healthy life in all aspects. Those years ago, when I was starting out with recovery, it was happening that I hade ED. Then I had PE. Then it sometimes felt as if I had both (yeah, I?m one of those ?lucky? guys...). The PE is still a problem for me.

I think a real breakthrought for me happened several weeks ago. I discovered YBOP. First, I saw the films about the nature of the modern PMO addiction, then I started browsing other materials. If course, not all at once. Of course, hesitantly, in a way, as the addiction does not want to let hold of you and will tell you: ?you don?t need that, why bother??. But inevitably I found out that there is a gigantic community of people helping each other, out there in the Internet.

I?m not sure what does the fact that I discovered this site so late tell about my recovery.

I think I got complacent.

It seems I been ?evading life? for quite some time now. Not totally, not wholly, but evading enough not to really live it fully, in the good and the bad, and be constantly present. Instead, many of those small steps, small cranks in the armour, were holding me back. This addiction really is much stronger than me.

I feel I want to get rid of all the artificial stimulation and it is a challenge. I can see now, I really got used to viewing Internet in an unhealthy way. Same applies to how I look at women in real life.

I am here to ask you guys for help. If any single one of you can relate to whatever that I wrote above, please let me know ? either here in the thread or through a private message. I am not sure if I am open enough to share my emotions and difficult here in this open thread. I know that is the trick but still it feels a bit difficult ? I guess I would feel more at ease if I could write a private message to someone. If any of you want to share anything with me or ask ? please do.

I have a friend, who is recovering from a gambling addiction - he recently wrote on his blog that it is good to think, every time you come back, that this is this time. That this time it is for good. That this time it will last. I think it's a great thought. Hope is central.

I?m keeping my fingers crossed for all of us.

Jan
 

Gabe Deem

Administrator
Staff member
Admin
Moderator
@ Jan

First off welcome to the Nation! Glad to have you here and I hope you receive the information and support you need on this forum. We are all here for you.

I am 27 years old, I started using P when I was around 10 years old, I found out that is a problem when I was about 21

I can relate to your porn history. I started masturbating around 8 to magazines, cable TV softcore porn at age 10, and internet porn at age 12 and continued to do so up until the age of 23 when I found out it was a problem. I am now 26 and a few weeks away from being 3 years clean, and my porn induced ED is gone. Just know that recovery is possible and you can find healing here.

There are many guys who have a similar story as you. Know that you are not alone. Just read through some of the other journals and you will see what I am talking about.

watching women in bikini's in the net, looking up celebrities' pics in the net, perusing facebook accounts while looking for pics of girls.

Something to understand is this: It is not content that matters but really it is wiring your arousal to pixels on a screen and novelty. There was one guy who masturbated while clicking through thousands of bikini pictures who claimed to have developed PIED. Dopamine raises for novelty, anything new, so seeking and searching on the internet keeps excitement high for extended periods of time, ultimately conditioning our sexual response to need that novelty and way of masturbating to get excited. Everything else can start to feel alien and not arousing.

So I would stay away from any activity online that mimics your porn behavior. Just my advice


It seems I been ?evading life? for quite some time now. Not totally, not wholly, but evading enough not to really live it fully

It is great that you have noticed that, because pursuing postitive, healthy, and productive things in life will be crucial to your reboot. When we give up an addiction we have to replace it and fill the void that is there.

Focus on building new habits, not on fighting old ones. Understand that porn, or girls on a screen in general, will never satisfy you, and real connection with your partner is way better and is not meaningless like jacking off to porn is.

Hope the best for you

 

jkkk

Well-Known Member
Gabe,

Thanks a lot for replying to my message.

Yes, novelty is issue. It was a real shock to me to discover everything about novelty on YBOP. I felt like totally dumbstruck. That is exactly my experience.

I now know that this novelty-seeking is the real, real crux of my addiction. So I am starting with a new attitude of really cutting out pixels and it is going to be difficult, really difficult - simply because of all the angles that they attack from every day in our modern culture. But I hope - this time, it just might be it.

It's really quite cruel how it works. Honestly, PMO-wise I can give myself a lot of credit for what I achieved through those years. But the novelty "hunts" did not help on my path.

That's why I want to it and tackle that issue.

I hope I am not crossing the line here, but I wanted to ask you something and actually this question goes out to all you guys out there reading this:

Did P and all the binges affect the way you guys perceive your partner in terms of sexual attractiveness/overall partner satisfaction level? Did you see positive results after rebooting?

One of the most difficult things for me is that all this FB-perusing, looking at women in the streets and so on really affects my perception of my wife. I am constantly comparing her with other women, which creates a lot of dissatisfaction for me, a lot of inner tension that is extremely strange and feels very unnatural and irrational.

And yet, which I think is most staggering, when I want to be intimately with my wife, I get PE or ED or both... Which actually makes me think that these two mechanisms really are interconnected (I understand this has not been yet fully researched - if you guys have anything interesting on the topic - let me know!). This, I think, is just pure cruelty of this addiction.
 

HGA321

Member
Hi jkkk,

Thanks for the response on my journal. Also, you were right. I read your post and I can relate to several things you said.

jkkk said:
I was a heavy user. I remember getting back from middle school and high school and spending my whole afternoon doing PMO.

But my situation was kind of different ? I had a girlfriend (she is now my wife), my high-school sweetheart (one sided this one was in high-shool, though) around. A woman I love. A beautiful woman. Still, that didn?t stop me from looking around and at the same time being quite constantly dissatisfied with her, mainly from a sexual point of view (?why couldn?t she have more up front, that would be really cool? ? I spent significant amount of time browsing plastic surgery sites). Many times I had been asking myself, why am I comparing her all the time to other girls, in the real life, or in the Internet or wherever.

I was the same in middle/high school. Once I had the computer it was pretty much alternating between PMO and videogames during all my free time.

I also am married to my highschool sweetheart and went through a period of feeling very dissatisfied with her. I used to think like, if she only was a little more X/Y/Z I would be happier. When we first got together I thought she was extremely attractive but after years it was fading some. I blamed her initially but it was really just the tons of P I was watching. After we got married I managed to make myself stop consciously comparing her to girls on the internet, but was still having my current DE/weak libido issues. I had even started  trying to pick out women on the internet who looked kind of like her. This of course didn't help. Even if I started with someone who resembled her, two hours later I had seen another 199 women.

In my head, I know my wife is attractive but I have worn the physical response to her away.
Actually, just real women in general. I can't remember the last time I saw a woman in real life and felt that physical attraction like I did when I was younger.

I think if you can manage to stay away from PMO, you will get your attraction back. I am only on day five of no PMO, but even after only my short break I think it is helping. Last night when I kissed my wife, I felt like there was more warmth than usual. If we can just keep away from the fake stuff long enough then the real thing will regain it's appeal.

Stay strong man.

(edit)

Was thinking a little after I wrote this and I wanted to add a few thoughts. I am not the greatest communicator at times because I think I am expressing more of what is in my head than I actually am.

I said I had managed to stop consciously comparing my wife to other women. I think the biggest help to this was starting to understand how fake and manufactured "beauty" is in the media and in porn as well.

First- No one really looks how they do on TV/magazine/image/porn . Even whoever you think is beautiful doesn't really look like that in real life. The use of specific angles, makeup, lighting, and photoshop strongly distorts people's appearance. These women may still be attractive, but in a way unlike whatever photoshoot/video presents them.

Second- The media and marketing choose and affect what people regard as beautiful. These things want your attention and money. By choosing what we see, they warp our perspectives of women.

I spent a lot of time reading about or watching things on the USA changing standards of beauty and marketing. This helped me to realize the problem was in my mind and not with how my wife looked and I didn't feel dissatisfied as much. Unfortunately, that still didn't help my DE and libido because I was still PMO all the time.

As for the FB and looking at real women, that is something else I guess. With FB you just have to remember that people usually try and present themselves in a certain way on social media. If you are looking at some girls photos you think is hot, I guarantee she picked the best ones out. However, you see your wife all the time so you get the all dressed up version when you go out to a party or something, but mostly it is the bumming around in pajamas or casual version. These girls on FB are the same in real life, but you don't see the rest.

Something that helped me also care less about how my wife compared to some other girl was just to focus on the non-body things I enjoyed about her. I try and talk with her about the things, she likes, make her laugh, just have fun. Enhance your relationship in the non-sexual ways and it helps to erase some of the comparative things going on in your head.

 

jkkk

Well-Known Member
Hey HGA321,

I think this site is nothing short of a miracle.

I mean the fact that we connect over those issues and find understanding is just tremendous


HGA321 said:
In my head, I know my wife is attractive but I have worn the physical response to her away.

I think you nailed it here. This is exactly how I feel, too.

The whole brain chemistry, desensitization to regular and normal sensations and sensitization to hardcore P and whatever does all that.

What is difficult to me is that the chemical mess that happened in my brain over the years makes me crave novelty under all circumstances. If my brain doesn't gets P, it craves for Facebook/Internet images, whatever. If it doesn't get that it starts craving "objects" in real life.

The latest example is today. I tried to stay away from all images of women on the net. It painfully shows me how strong my patterns of behaviour are. It's almost normal for me to google images of any woman that is mentioned wherever in the news/any kind of piece of information. It's normal for me to look for any sexually-linked information on the news, be it someone wedding, a divorce, a new couple, a new celebrity... I would looking for whatever, really, that would give a justification to go on the searching binge. And I spend all my day working in front of the computer, getting distracted by all that data. It's crazy, when I think of it. I look back and it seems that for years I have found thousands of excuses to tell myself that it is normal and everybody does that.

But today I tried to stay away from it. And I somehow managed. Then I went to do some swimming (normally I prefer gym but I have a wrist injury at the moment and my options are confined to swimming). After swimming I was getting out of the fitness facility and I spotted this girl who had this revealing top on her. And I immediately became preoccupied in my mind with that women and it really took me a good while to shake off this preoccupation. And it tormented me - it actually still torments me, this is how I feel.

It's not the first time this happened, not the last one, I'm afraid. I told myself many times that also this spotting of other woman is absolutely and every healthy guy does that. But then I realized it's not true. It's not to say that guys are not interest in attractive women (although I do some observations every now and then, and I noticed that there really are guys who remain unfazed), but many of them manage with a look and just go on. And it's a different thing me, because I will roll my eyes all other a particular woman and then think about her for the next few minutes. At least. It's crazy at well. It is.

But I'll be trying to turn my head away next time and relax, tell myself to just be easy, not to enagage myself. To be conscious, to not escape reality.

HGA321 said:
Something that helped me also care less about how my wife compared to some other girl was just to focus on the non-body things I enjoyed about her. I try and talk with her about the things, she likes, make her laugh, just have fun. Enhance your relationship in the non-sexual ways and it helps to erase some of the comparative things going on in your head.

You are right again. I think this is really important.

And I agree that all those girls on the net, they are unreal in a way. The way they are presented/present themselves, it follows a very clear modern culture pattern. Where perfection is a must. Where all girls really look fabulous on pics, but if you spent a week them you would know - they are just (or as much as) women. And - like ourselves - not all the time look "totally gorgeous". I think this a serious issue. I guess it's even more difficult for women: it puts them under all this pressure.

I think that "reality" (I'm lost for a better word to describe here) is key. The "reality" is the woman that you have by your side. The Internet and any artificial reaction (staring at a women in a shopping mall to me also does not have that much to do with reality) is not real. It's madness that we wired ourselves to the unreal.

Stay there, HGA321. I keep my fingers crossed for you. Remember to get back here in the good and the bad.
 

CrazyGopher

Active Member
jkkk said:
But today I tried to stay away from it. And I somehow managed. Then I went to do some swimming (normally I prefer gym but I have a wrist injury at the moment and my options are confined to swimming). After swimming I was getting out of the fitness facility and I spotted this girl who had this revealing top on her. And I immediately became preoccupied in my mind with that women and it really took me a good while to shake off this preoccupation. And it tormented me - it actually still torments me, this is how I feel.

I can relate to this. It's one of the things I find most frustrating about this process: the way random 1-second glimpses can become an obsession and create flashbacks that last for several days.

From my perspective, it seems like there are two problems:
[list type=decimal]
[*]As recovering porn users, we are somewhat oversensitive to sexual cues in the same way that a smoker is oversensitive to any imagery associated with cigarettes, and
[*]we are used to indulging our cravings rather than pushing them aside (which is what non-porn-addict men have hopefully been learning to do since they were 12 or so since it's unrealistic to follow up on most cravings)
[/list]

However, I think there are also two bits of good news:
[list type=decimal]
[*]When I choose not to look at a woman, it is less likely to create an obsession in my mind, and
[*]every time I succeed in "not looking," that becomes closer to being my default habit and it is easier to do the next time.
[/list]

I'm not very good at it, yet, but I think I'm getting better.
 

jkkk

Well-Known Member
hey CrazyGopher,

so good that you are there, so good.

Yes, this is the point.

Oversensitivity is a very good way to put it. It reflects exactly how it feels - a very small cue that would most likely create no reaction in case of a man who is not addicted, leads in our cases to an abnormal "overinterest", fantasizing and obsession.

What is astonishing is the strength of this reaction. At least in my case, it sometimes really takes a lot of time to shake off an image or fantasy.

Thanks for sharing your view and recommendation - I was also better at "looking away" in the past and I remember that it does help. Need to consciously work on it now.
 

jkkk

Well-Known Member
Today was a quite good day. I think I managed to stay away from watching women on the Internet. But I feel it's not yet as it should be.

I must say that it surprises how much it has become a habit for me. Any news read on the Internet can lead to me Googling some women.

I think I'm starting to realize I use the Internet in a really bad way. I constantly review social media sites (Facebook, Linkedin) and what usually attracts my attention are pics of women. Luckily some time ago I stopped looking on gossip sites, which usually have massive tons of "dangerous materials" - or mostly women on those pics there. But still, when my colleague at work watches that sight, I would over her arm and sometimes even tell her to open a particular pics of a women. It sounds quite stupid I know, but really - it's a cue and it's a real one.

Internet is one realm and the other is the world around. It's possible to stop watching pics of women on the Internet, but it's quite impossible to stop coming across women in the real life, which sometimes is also a cue - I can stare on and fantasize about such women quite easily. Looking away is an option. I remember I once heard that it also works to tell yourself that this woman is someone's daughter, possibly has a husband/boyfriend, a family, maybe kids. This helps to "unobjectify" her as a sexual object. I try to employ those techniques. But as CrazyGopher wrote, practice is crucial - it just gets a little better with every time.

Again, cues. They just fall over you sometimes. Yesterday, I was spending an evening with my friends at a bar on fresh air. A slighly drunken man in his 60s asked for a cigarette and "stayed for a bit longer". He was quite amusing so we gone into a slight chit-chat with him. The guy says that he recently fell in love in a woman in her 40s living in a city at the seaside. Then suddenly the guy takes his phone out and tells, "I'll show you guys some pictures of her". The pictures turn out to be topless and the guys just brags how great body that women has. The moment I saw naked pictures I was like "I don't want to see this", but obviously that was too late and the cue was there - I remember that picture.

Bum, there you go. I wasn't looking for it, I didn't want it, yet it found me. It happened to me in the past - to be surprised and not knowing how to react. It's one thing to not engage in what is harmful, but I feel it is a silghtly different skill to be constantly aware, to know how to react if something takes you by surprise.
 

jkkk

Well-Known Member
Adrain asked me recently about my objectives for my reboot. Well, this questions surprised me. I was thinking about objectives when I got onto this forum. I was looking for fellow strugglers and for their support.

But I guess objectives are not a bad idea ;)

Objectives

1. Stop PMO, where P in my case stands also for pixels, because I have a serious issue with reviewing social media, googling women, and this was often leads to the actual P. My objective: 40 days i.e. 12 June 2014. (Should I set a meter, what do you guys think? I'm not so convinced about them...)

2. Stop staring at women in public places, look at them in a respectful way (CrazyGopher seems to know what I'm talking about here).

3. Get rid of PIPE (that acronym is somewhat two-faced) and PIED.


As regards PMO - this really hard. Even today. It was not a bad day. I did not view any pics on the net. I had been in the public so there was a cue to stare at women, but I abstained from it - I'm pretty happy. And then in the evening, I zap the channels of the TV and I stumble upon a film with a pretty actress. I seem to recall it's a racy film, I Google it and yes it is. So I think: "what can I do to see it, maybe just get on YouTube and find out the hot scenes?..."...

Yeah. This is how it goes. I didn't do that but this idea stayed with me like these kinds of pretty small flashbacks CrazyGopher wrote about above.

I just hope it will get better with time.
 
Hi Thanks for reading and sharing on my journal
  Not all are born equal. I think our problems are similar, it's more of a psychological problem, when we can't have what we want, we fill in the gap by fantasizing. We kinda gave up on doing it the right way, the conventional way because we just fail and it aint our faults, in fact it's nobody's fault and that sucks. MO seems to give us an easy way out, I remember everytime I was thinking "Eff this, I'm done" before MO. Thanks for the "perks" of being down the bottom looking up, I have some interesting ideas as to how to help teenagers like us not to be in our footsteps. But our society is still too dumb and cruel, or men like us suffer because of that, we're choosing the lesser of the 2 evils
  It sounds philosophical but I know u'll understand
  In the meantime, just stay strong, keep it up and one day "it" will be up again.
 
 

jkkk

Well-Known Member
I must admit I also have this idea that those younger guys should be warned...

I feel I wasted many years of my life on PMO - pretty much a big chapter of growing up, adolescence, times in high school. Don't you guys feel like that sometimes?

But you're pointing to something extraordinarily important here:

Discipline said:
  Not all are born equal. I think our problems are similar, it's more of a psychological problem, when we can't have what we want, we fill in the gap by fantasizing.

This "we can't have what we want"... I feel was (still am?) unprepared for failures and difficulties in life. Was going for years on the premise things must be how I want. When they weren't - I PMO'ed, just like that. It seems to be the biggest lesson for me to take, how do deal with situations, when things do not go as planned.
 
Jkkk

The good thing is that you clearly and really want to do this. That alone is going to be very helpful. I remember quitting smoking cigarettes years ago. I tried and failed a handful of times. It wasn't until I really really wanted to, that I was able to.

It seems like you have the desire to stop and need some help with some of the triggers. We live in a hyper-sexualized world. It is hard to even watch a basketball game on tv anymore without images flashing about that could trigger a thought. Perhaps a solution is to move the computer in your house, or find safe places where it is okay to use. This is hard - I use my computer at work, so one could think that that would be tough sometimes, but it has never been an issue with me. Maybe this strategy would work well for you too.
 

jkkk

Well-Known Member
I definitely have some issues with triggers. It's kind of like the trigger being a problem per se, in the sense that I does not even have to trigger anything.

Today I came across a book in the bookstore. I knew from the cover that it would have racy action inside, so I should have left it there. But I started perusing and indeed I came across some triggering fragment. Left it afterwards, but can someone tell me, what was the point of even started reading it, if I knew from the start that it was risky? This addiction is really irrational.

Anyway, I do feel a bit down because of that - it was an avoidable situation. I need to learn. I want to learn.
 
It's a natural reaction to want to see that kind of content. But for us, that kind of trigger leads to a behavior that we have a tough time controlling. It doesn't take much for the mind to rationalize thinking that things are going to be okay even with just a click or a few pages and then using. So, I'd try to avoid that kind of content the same way that you'd avoid getting shocked or being around a skunk!

Stay strong man - you can do it!
 

jkkk

Well-Known Member
Larry,

Thanks a lot for your words of support!

Today was better - I looked away when faced with triggers.

My dates

I thought that it might be a good idea if I keep track of some important dates. And so:

7 April 2014 - was the last time that I viewed P (If I make till tomorrow I will have a full month!)

27 April 2014 - when I joined RebootNation and started a new reboot (10 days and counting :) )
 

SETI

Active Member
I look away from sexy stuff (on a screen) these days. I know looking will lead to arousal and what do I do with that arousal? I know what I used to do but thats not the game plan. You are aware of your behavior and that is really great I think!
 

Dboy

Member
SETI said:
I look away from sexy stuff (on a screen) these days. I know looking will lead to arousal and what do I do with that arousal? I know what I used to do but thats not the game plan. You are aware of your behavior and that is really great I think!

I agree, & do the same. trouble is There's a lot of sexy stuff floating around  the web & on TV. I use this technique called the "Triple A Method "

Alert- realize it's inappropriate for you
Avert - look away or think of something else if you're imagining
Affirm - give yourself a mental high 5, congratulate yourself for being strong. say "I didn't mean to see that, I've been clean for x days & I'll stay that way"

It really helps.

 

SETI

Active Member
Dboy said:
SETI said:
I look away from sexy stuff (on a screen) these days. I know looking will lead to arousal and what do I do with that arousal? I know what I used to do but thats not the game plan. You are aware of your behavior and that is really great I think!

I agree, & do the same. trouble is There's a lot of sexy stuff floating around  the web & on TV. I use this technique called the "Triple A Method "

Alert- realize it's inappropriate for you
Avert - look away or think of something else if you're imagining
Affirm - give yourself a mental high 5, congratulate yourself for being strong. say "I didn't mean to see that, I've been clean for x days & I'll stay that way"

It really helps.

Thats's awesome! I use adblock and stay away from skipping around videos on youtube.
 

jkkk

Well-Known Member
Dboy said:
SETI said:
I look away from sexy stuff (on a screen) these days. I know looking will lead to arousal and what do I do with that arousal? I know what I used to do but thats not the game plan. You are aware of your behavior and that is really great I think!

I agree, & do the same. trouble is There's a lot of sexy stuff floating around  the web & on TV. I use this technique called the "Triple A Method "

Alert- realize it's inappropriate for you
Avert - look away or think of something else if you're imagining
Affirm - give yourself a mental high 5, congratulate yourself for being strong. say "I didn't mean to see that, I've been clean for x days & I'll stay that way"

It really helps.

Sounds great :)

I particularly like the high five point - we all deserve affirmation for our effort!
 

jkkk

Well-Known Member
I haven't been on my journal for a few days, so here is my update on how are things going.

1. I am starting to feel the benefits of reboot. I've been more focused at work. I've been more satisfied with my work: less thoughts about changing my job. I've been more satisfied with my wife, I like her more, she turns me on more.

I have a big issue with dissatisfaction in general and I am starting to feel that it is really linked to PMO and looking for cues.

2. I think I am starting to understand what has been going on with my for the last couple of months. As I wrote in my journal I did my first reboot more than 4 years ago. But afterwards I struggled to keep the good fruit that it generated. I did not know how to get back to normal sex life and so on. I had no clue really. I think I relapsed, in a way. I say "I think" because the issue is I never went back to viewing P nad MO to it on daily basis. Not even a weekly basis. It happened to me several times in these few years but not that much. The problem I think is what was going in between - I was constantly on the cue for things. I let myself be sucked by cues - be it on the Internet or in life (staring at woman, fanstasizing etc.). I know it sounds a bit crazy but this is what I felt.

Reboot really is a state of mind and I think that I lost state of mind some time ago (something like a year ago, maybe year and a half). Not doing literal PMO does not seem to be enough to me. I guess it has a scientific explanation - all this cuing stuff still activates the same sentisized pathways of looking for novelty and turning on.

Any thoughts, anyone?

3. Premature ejaculation. I am having sex with my wife during my reboot. It isn't a lot, but I am having it. I figure that since I am to rewire myself and it is her that I want to rewire to, it should not harm my reboot. I hope it doesn't.

But what is putting me off sex at the moment is PE. It really got bad for a few months now. I am not able to sustain any reasonable time... I went back to YBOP to read about it and started looking around other "nofap" communities and it seems that it is a recurring problem. Many guys are reporting that reboots really helped. I am looking at my day count and, well, it's not particularly impressive. Given the lenght of my addiction and the fact I relapsed I guess I might really need a long reboot to really see the fruits of the reboot in the PE department. But it really is very frustrating and unnerving.

Anyone going through such difficulties?
 
Top