Hi All New Here. Want your guidance and support. I had been to your website but did not register for long. I was on a successful No PMO streak in 2018 which lasted nearly 10 months or more till it broke in February 2019. Then I maintained a good streak till July 2019. But since then I have relapsed 8 times and 3 times in October itself. And most of these times , it has happend when I am alone in the house. Any advice or support will be greatly appreciated.
Welcome! That must be frustrating to have a 10 month streak, and then relapse. It sounds to me like you're not binging or jumping back in feet first, taking a "vacation" from rebooting, which is very, very good. One thing I find myself saying about reboots is that it is like an old side scrolling arcade beat 'em up. You keep moving, some enemies are harder than others, many are repetitious, some are a bit strange, sometimes you have to deal with several at once, but then you have the final boss. This one is much, much stronger than any of the others, we have to save our resources for it, and many times we "die" there and have to head back to the beginning. The final boss is the emotional stuff. It is the anxiety, the loneliness, the trauma, the insecurities, whatever deep parts of you got wrapped up in your porn addiction. For some, their addiction starts with some trauma, molestation or rape in extreme cases. For others it is just sheer human woundedness - lack luster relationships, bad break ups, whatever. And for others still, it is just stuff created by the porn addiction. Addiction is funny like that - if there are big wounds it can find and infect, it will do that. If not, it will find a paper cut and turn it into a big wound. Or, it may just create its own wound. I know nothing about you, but I'm guessing that there was something about last July that gave that final boss a bit of a come back.
Thanks for your response. The way you put that it is a vacation is quite encouraging. I guess I should aim small, miss small. Next committment -36 days.
@Pearl Gourami Can you find similarities in the days or weeks leading up to your relapses. When I was in rehab for porn addiction there was a therapist who gave a speech about what he called the "pre-lapse". This is all the time leading up to the actual relapse, because once you get to that relapse, there's really nothing that's going to stop you, so you have to learn to recognize patterns of when you're healthy and see deviations from those patterns in real-time to avoid going further down the road. You mention being alone in the house. I'm guessing you've been alone in your house hundreds of times without a relapse. So what is it about those specific times? Did something happen right before you got home? Was something on TV or did you have contact with somebody after you got home? In early recovery, I found examining the pre-lapse to be valuable. I can honestly say I never relapsed on either porn or alcohol and along with the cognitive behavioral therapy, this was a great exercise in keeping me in my present mind and looking at my choices as they happened.
Hi Joshua I did not carefully observe what happened in the pre lapse period but I was in a social gathering with a lot of attractive women the previous day. Glad that you were able to give up alcohol and porn completely.
Hmm! I am more determined. I am trying to keep my thoughts clean and even avoiding "soft" content like google search of "beautiful women". It feels much better- the 'memory' of those porn videos are slowly fading-they hang on to your brain like a parasitic worm; so now that is gone. Will update after I hit 30 or 40 days .
Going strong at 45 days; now it looks like I am more determined but I should be on guard. My target as of now is 144 days . 12 X 12 .
@Pearl Gourami This is just my mean-nothing opinion, but I think you should have two targets: today and infinity. You're going to be super pissed off at yourself if you hit day 145 and have a porn party. Of course, if that's the kind of medium-term goal that's getting you through, then stick with it. My third grade teacher who made us learn our multiplication tables through 12 would be proud of you. And BTW...45 days...that's pretty f'n sweet. Nice work.
