Nice having you around again, man. So many ways to skin a cat and, ultimately: 1. find the way it works best for you; 2. while still staying away from P . Here's something to think about: abstaining not only gives you a chance to "ascend", it makes sure your future is less miserable . And this, my friend, is a guarantee.
Definitely true. Because no matter how bad things may seem, watching porn will always make it even worse. You asked me in your journal how I was doing. That's probably the question that gets lied about the most, isn't it. So I won't lie: Things could be better and my life is pretty much a mess. It's not even about porn that much. To paraphrase an old rap song: "I've got 99 problems and the porn is only one". But sometimes life is just like that. To quote something from the children's book Momo that I've quoted before in this thread: So it's one day at time, one step at a time, one problem at a time. Start with one and don't look at the whole mess.
Dang, I'll have to steal that one! A good reminder this evening for me. I came here instead of acting out on my horniness . Yes. But probably not here...we bare our souls to strangers that become the ones that know more about us than most in our "real" life. Based on what I was saying in my journal, I can relate. But slipping promises some release, when, in fact, it would only add headache. I'm speaking about myself but not only. We need a base to continue (re)building on, and that includes treating ourselves kinder than we did in the past. It's wasn't called "self-abuse" for nothing back in the days.
8 days without porn. I feel a little more positive and started to work on some of the mess in my life. It's unusually sunny and warm outside and after the winter that improves my mood like nothing else. A long road ahead, but let's just start.
Congrats on the 8 days! We are more or less in the same place on a slightly different road (I'm M free for 9 days). Let's fight together and let's support eachother Btw, Momo is one of the best books of human history
That's great to hear! And I agree. Sometimes children's books can be much more helpful for adults than "adult books." It's a great book. Today I have some pretty strong urges. But it feels more like real horniness rather than porn urges, although it is not always easy to tell the two apart.
I see it that way: One needs a positive vision or outlook, but it can't be quitting porn itself. Obviously, all of us here fail to live a better life WITH PMO, but I think the goal (and your positive future) should be a good life because of other things than just being "pornfree". I am not sure if I described it well, but just wanted to add this as a thought. My best wishes to you!
I would agree with @warded , what we are trying to accomplish here must necessarily be bigger than just a life without P.
Sorry for the absence again. This time it is not intentional. I couldn't reach YBR and thought it was down. When I tried it from another computer (like right now) it worked. So I have the strong suspicion that a DNS filter I use on my laptop is ironically blocking YBR. I sent an e-mail to the developer and explained that YBR is an anti porn-site and not a porn site. I hope they are unblocking it soon and I can use YBR on my own device again. Hope you are all doing well!
Hi Luke. I'm not an expert on those things but hopefully there's a way to "whitelist" YBR so that the DNS filter doesn't block it. I have noticed that problem once or twice over the years, for example when using public WiFi.
Okay, I have finally solved the problem with the DNS filter and can reach YBR again from my own laptop. If anyone here wants to use a DNS filter, don't use "Ultra DNS Family Secure". They block YBR and if you write an e-mail, they just say it's blocked and don't give any reason. Anyway, here we are again. In one of my last posts before my absence I wrote For a change I really put this resolution into practice this time and started to tackle the problems in my life. I made a list of all the mess and started small, one by one, step by step. Almost exactly two months after that post things look a little better and I'm more optimistic. I think I was stuck in a state of learned helplessness and had to start small. Now my financial situation and some other problems look better. Some parts of my life are still a mess, but I keep working on it. Porn wise things got better for a while but lately I went back into old habits. So things could be better in that department but I try not to let it influence me too much and try to not use it as an excuse to go on with my life. Anyway, good to be back on the forum full-time.
Sunday was a bad day, but since then it has been fairly easy to get the ball rolling again. The last two days and today were pretty good so far. The real test this week comes this weekend. It's my mom's birthday on Saturday, so I'll be at my parents home for the weekend. That's always dangerous territory with unfiltered internet and boredom. I'll try to keep myself busy and stay away from averything with a screen.
Hey Luke, nice seeing you again. Would it be possible to leave the laptop and smart phone out of your bedroom when you go to your parent's ? That could prove helpful in solidifying your intention during your stay at your parent's. Stay strong !
The problem is the devices of my parents (laptop and dad's ipad). My own laptop is pretty safe and I don't even have a smartphone anymore since last summer. So my plan is to arrive late on Friday evening, keep company on Saturday and leave early on Sunday. This way there shouldn't be many opportunities and boredom.
Didn't manage to stay clean the entire weekend. Started out good but on Saturday evening I was stressed out, did some risky google searches and... well, you know the rest of the story. Right now I'm hyper-reactive to certain triggers and I need to find better ways to deal with it. Now with my own devices I have a chance to build up some self-control and work on that.
Today is day 7 without PMO. I'm in a rather depressed mood. Tried briefly today to bypass the blockers on my laptop but didn't find a way and let it go. The good news is that my laptop is safe, the bad news is that I tried it anyway. I need to let go of even trying. If not, I will leap at the prey again like a half-starved wolf at the next opportunity. I am currently reading up on Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction by John Kabat-Zinn. Stress is one of my biggest triggers, maybe the biggest. I'm trying to find new ways to deal with stress. For the past week, in addition to breathing meditation, I have been doing a daily body scan and on some days some yoga. Kabat-Zinn recommends trying his program for 8 weeks. I will try this and see how it affects my well being.
Hello Luke, in my opinion the key here is the way you frame P in your head. If you see P like the ''forbidden fruit'' that you're not supposed to touch, like this phrasing here seems to imply, then you are setting yourself up for failure. Because it will eventually start to seem impossible not to think about it. Not because you have low willpower or are a ''bad person'', but because you subconsciously still like P. What has helped me tremendously, was framing P as boring. Because that is what it really is, watching P alone is boring, and one-dimensional. Compared to real good sex, it doesn't even come close. I know that might sound strange coming from a self confessed P addict, but until this paradigm shift about P happened in my head, there was no chance in hell that I was going to successfully reboot when looking back at it now. Just a little food for thought.
@Kuhn I'm not worried about thinking about porn, dreaming about porn, having flashbacks, having cravings etc. I accept that as normal reactions I have little to no control over. But actively looking for pornographic material is something else. I don't see porn urges as something bad, I see them as something completely normal in my situation. But I can react to them in different ways. What I tried in the past and what I'm trying again currently is urge surfing. Just accepting the urge and observing it. I'm trying to break that automatism bad feeling/emotion -> urge -> looking for porn and it's not easy because it's deeply ingrained after decades of conditioning. And when I react like yesterday it's still the old way. I was not "successful" with it, but that was only due to software on my laptop. Had I had unfiltered Internet, an hour-long PMO session would have followed. One of my "problems" regarding the mindset with porn is that I almost never watch porn. When I say porn, I use that word in a broader sense. In the last 6-7 years or so I have watched porn (in the sense it's normally used) maybe 10% of the time I PMOd. And even if I watched something, it's amateur porn and rather of the harmless range. I can't even watch normal hardcore porn because I'm disgusted by it. Everything is fake, the people are fake, the moaning is fake, the looks are fake. I am seriously disgusted by that and couldn't watch it even if I forced myself to. So when I say "porn" I mean pictures of naked women, or they don't even have to be naked. Reddit, Twitter or Instagram or porn sites for me. I look at them like other people look at youporn or xhamster or whatever the hot porn sites are these days. Some people would probably envy me for that, especially people who don't find "normal women" attractive anymore because they have watched thousands of hours of videos with the most astonishing fetishes and only get erections to those fetish videos anymore. That's why I always have some trouble changing my "mindset" about porn, since I don't even think I have one. I have no illusions about porn. But that's also the trouble. I agree that porn is boring. I don't even have to tell myself that, because I see it that way anyway. But seeing a woman in a bikini will never be boring. And I have no desire whatsoever for that to ever get boring. But I don't want this to turn into an hours-long, compulsive search on the Internet.
