Well.. that's is what I wrote last week, due to relapsing and fucking up I was not ready to perceive what I felt and thought. At the moment I thought this was my last relapse, and I would write a symbolic farewell letter to one of my favourite girls. Sometimes I still feel naive because of my mindset versus my addiction, because I have learned there are so many layers to peel off and after years of recovery I still feel the addiction has a hold of me. Now I know the addiction has a hold of me, that it manipulates me and controls me more than I want to believe. But I am believing exactly that now. This is what I wrote on February 21st. Yesterday(so 20th of Feb) I relapsed unfortunately, and I found out I wasn't seeing signal that comprised my path towards PMO. The first symptom was focusing on a job that made me unhappy but enabled me to live a fairly decent life. I was able to act normal, have a routine.. be part of various communities and so on. Still, not enough focus on recovery, not enough self-compassion, not enough connected to my self. My job became a burden and now I feel I am paying the price, because I haven't felt right yet. There is no pleasure from Predominantly, that is what recovery is about. Recognising the right things and leaving behind what is wrong for you. I am not saying my job is wrong, but at this moment it is wrong for me. Too much stress, too little appeal. Besides this stressor I have experienced a lot of re...binding? What is it called again?! A rewiring. I am seeing a young lady my age and we share a lot of time, a lot of insights and also some sex. The sex has been a Trojan horse, giving me short term rewiring but on the long run major craves and post acute withdrawal symptoms. I had insomnia again. I am suffering more belching, aching muscles and so on. As a result I have been browsing and downloading porn again and seeing this resulted in a relapse, but also negative and warped thoughts, paranoia, decrease in self-esteem. Things have gotten tough on me and instead of toughening up I should change my decision-making. I think toughening up insinuates I should accept resistance from withdrawals and my job... but I have to option to take a different job. That's what I want. So far, sobriety from drugs and alcohol has brought me a much - clearer thoughts, the possibility to function in society. Now, this confidence allows me to see various elements of addiction as they truly are. Self-neglect, self-destruction, manipulation, self-delussion… you name it, I feel and see it. This was not the case a few years ago. That’s also the power of addiction, it blinds you even when you think you are self-connected. February 24th. Well, as for improving my situation… I have been meeting up with a woman for about 6 weeks now and she allowed me to trial -by-error in and out of my addiction… meaning I was able to have some proper rewiring and sex, but I noticed my body is not ready to have orgasmic sex yet. She is very supportive and I can’t see my life without her at this moment. We have become friends and we help each other out on various fields, and we both are on our own path of recovery. She listens to my stories, she allows me to share feelings, she helps me to understand some things. It good for both of us. The relapses I have had went from January to yesterday, and now I feel drained, fried, depressed, lethargic... a lot of negative symptoms. I called in sick on Friday and I haven't found my energy back. This is a nasty relapse that has swept away much.
Jesus f**king Christ, the addiction has shown its teeth and its grit. A few hours ago I had another quick PMO because I couldn't get the thought of porn out my system, and I was triggered by a journal posting I made a few days ago. I thought that 3 days ago I had met my Waterloo, I was feeling terrible after fapping, I was burned out of energy and hardly could enjoy life. So, I wrote something like "Goodbye dear <one favourite models> " to write a farewell note. She was my Waterloo. However, that was my naive brain not being able to grasp the depth to which my addiction grows. But then... today, while reviewing my journal to make a new game plan, I saw the triggering post about 'my'model. I couldn't resist, I could not think clearly. There was a lot I couldn't do. Now, with the little monster resting I can think clearly now. It's only a matter of time before the ugly monster shows its ugly head again. So now I am using the clarity to write various things down, to make some lists of recovery tools(this forum, my journal. rehab, The Slight Edge and so on) to be ready to cope. Essentially, my new friend got me crazy with sex and the orgasms killed me. She is understanding, she enables me to recover and allows me to set boundaries and goals. She helped me to reach out for help a few days ago so I am pleased with that.
I haven't look at porn nor have I masturbated since February, so 2 weeks clean. I think one of the most significant contributors to this positive development are the consistent visiting of SLAA meetings, goal setting and productivity. The SLAA meetings are a true blessing to partake in, because there is a non-judgmental atmosphere and variying areas of addiction recovery. There's a lot of familiarity and I get a lot of feedback. Still, sometimes it's too much to take in. I feel both energised and exhausted at the same time. We also discuss private situations, people losing their jobs- due to porn addiction, dealing with suicidal tendencies - a lady married to a porn addict, or people getting robbed by prostitues - a sex, narcotic and porn addict. Each of us has a different story and each has it's own unique, devastating sex/porn addiction to deal with. But were we used to be alone in our addiction, this group allows us to share and grow. Personally, I still am suffering from withdrawal/recovery. I wake up with compulsive thoughts about having forced sex/rape. This is something I have been experiencing for a long time already, perhaps a decade. It's a slippery slope caused by porn and fueled by my negativity. Now, I have to go up the slippery to slope to face the problem. I used to panic and get frustrated by the thoughts and how it made me feel. Now I am not subject to negative feelings any more. There seems to be a giant valley between what I used to experience now and then, that the thoughts don't effect my emotions anymore. Somehow. it's detached. From a burden it has become a nuissance. As for the goal setting, I have set up a structure to cover a few areas of life I want to focus on. At this moment particularly recovery from addction has my deepest interest and my primary focus, but also a better job and using my current job to cover basic expenditure and long-term investments. It's not easy, I have limited financial resources available and the goals I want to achieve costs more many than I earn. It's a challenge! For now I am coping very well, but it's with ups and downs. Take care!
Well things have been going well, and I have been clean for 23 days. I am glad because I am able to stay away from vices very successfully. Also, I can set boundaries to myself and others. I am taking the right actions... I get in touch with people to ask for help and for example I have done tedious work like filling in IRS forms (1 down, 2 more to go). Good thing about this; I am getting a load of money back! Which I can use really well.
Today is dat 29 no porn no fap. It feels good but I'm still feeling the occasional compulsive thought. Every morning I wake up with HOCD thoughts and these stay for a while, and it makes me feel anxious and a bit depressed. It's hard to step out of the train of thoughts. However, I've been taking care of some essentials: the kinder garden rules from the clip by dr. Melamy. I took care of my surroundings, I worked out, ate well and done much to make myself feel better. And it worked. I feel at ease now. And this post is a part of enjoying the ease. Take care
I´ve relapsed quite some time... it was a gradual, slippery slope. On Thursday I could´nt get rid of the obsessive thinking and I was triggered by both material on social media and by a message a friend sent me. This went on for about 2 or 3 days and then last Thursday I looked at P. That very same night I had a WD and I was also meeting up with a friend of mine. We have been dating and decided to remain friends, and sometimes we ended up in bed. I told her how I feel, that I don´t feel more than friendship. However she likes me more and last week she started kissing me and I gave in. I ended up having sex twice with her and I was very much aware the driving force was my porn addiction, but I strongly felt a certain mindfulness, a sense of ´this is not the right thing, so please make the best of it´. What I enjoyed about it was my ability to test my endurance and performance, which were alright, yet the feeling of love was not there. I felt like a sensitive robot. Then, the next the day we ended up having sex in the shower - standing sex. Never had that before, which was fun - I enjoyed it a lot more than the first sex. Still, not a feeling of love and passion. It was very much lust. Eventually, later that day and yesterday I ended up watching porn. Shucks. Yesterday I also PMOed in a work lunch break. Not proud. The fap itself wasn;t the worst thing, I was being triggered to watch porn the entire time. I have been working at home for 2 weeks now and this is something that I have never experienced and somehow am foolish enough to browse porn while working. I feel lost because of this. Last week I have been in touch with a fellow of my SLAA group and I have to say I start to appreciate the contact. We call each other a few times a week just to check in and express our feelings and experiences. Particularly we talk about recovery and actually advice each other specifally. It works amazingly and it feels good to be able to share so much and without judgement.
As young teenage adolescent I learned to create self-pity when I wasn't ready for something. I would receive sympathy, empathy, and the shame of what I could not do was taken away by the empathy. I think this created a pathway to allowing failure to occur through my inexperience. I remember, during school time when I knew I wasn't prepared, sitting on a school bench and bending over excessively, to make sure my blood would flow to my brains. I would feel nauseous , light-headed and ill. Then, I would go to my school principal and ask permission to go home. I was always allowed to leave. I was good at tricking the system by acting ill, and needn't to do a test. I was able to escape day-to-day responsibilities AND receive social credit for it by mother. That's how it felt. I've used this trick quite some times and I think was not really able to oversee the consequences on the long term, because to my friends I felt weak as I was escaping and to my mom I was lying, which made me feel ashamed. This must have happened between 2000/2001 and well... the escaping and lying worsened over the following decades. The reason I got into writing this was a find of Carl Jung, the Swiss psychoanalyst. At random I found this information and I think he has experienced similar situations while he had a momentary shook up that got him out of his victim role - whereas I was able to remain self-victimized. I can't full compare the situations but I really found a puzzle piece. Quote from Wikipedia: "At the age of 12, shortly before the end of his first year at the Humanistisches Gymnasium in Basel, Jung was pushed to the ground by another boy so hard that he momentarily lost consciousness. (Jung later recognized that the incident was indirectly his fault.) A thought then came to him—"now you won't have to go to school anymore."[22] From then on, whenever he walked to school or began homework, he fainted. He remained at home for the next six months until he overheard his father speaking hurriedly to a visitor about the boy's future ability to support himself. They suspected he had epilepsy. Confronted with the reality of his family's poverty, he realized the need for academic excellence. He went into his father's study and began poring over Latin grammar. He fainted three more times but eventually overcame the urge and did not faint again. This event, Jung later recalled, "was when I learned what a neurosis is." It seems that what I have done, is create a very deeply rooted neurosis, My urge to escape stems from various other experiences I haven't been able to describe to a useful extent. This writing above is a short introduction but opens up opportunities for future reflections.
Also. Back to the drawing board, I relapsed plentiful last couple of days and I am taking measures to prevent more from happening. Relapsed yesterday when I was bored and I couldn't deal with urges and triggering material. It's a challenge and a necessity.
I've been to another SLAA meeting - they are online now - and I must admit every single sessions provides relief and new insights. We have discussed withdrawals and dealing with cravings. Also, yesterday 2 fellows called, one of them I speak regularly with, the other one I called a few weeks ago and just checked in on me. From both the meeting and the calls I learned it is okay to call if I need help, to share my burden when I am dealing with intense cravings, withdrawals or other feats of recovery. The second fellow told "It's always good to call and share instead of getting back to your little cocoon" which is exactly what happens during the slippery slope towards relapse.
Hey buddy, I think that's quite brave to feel confident in sharing such stuff. Much better than when people close inside and suffer. Stay strong!
thanks for commenting Wise Hermit. I've gained a lot of confidence over the last couple of months, particularly joining SLAA meetings and having someone to share all my thoughts and experiences with. I am a lot more sensible and I share my thoughts and feelings as much as I can. Sharing usually leads to others receiving useful information... so once again thanks for sharing! The last couple of weeks I have had various set backs but I have been clean for about 11 days now - except for an orgasm through oral sex. April was riddled with relapses and set backs but one positive feat stood out: I have been clean of drugs and alcohol for over a year. To this day, a year and a week. This experience, both feeling and knowing, makes me believe it is possible to quit a vice and I have lost some illusions about recovery. There is no symbolism, there is no perfect day, there isn't a final goodbye. Those were some of my delusional constructs and I've seen through them. This small shift of mindset allows me to feel confident about what is coming. I can say that I am confident about the ups and downs that are part of recovery. Before, I could only be confident about the ups of recovery. But it is not a straight line, not a shooting star. I accept the gloomy parts, the aches in my legs and sloth in my body, and I cheer to the energy and clarity I feel during the ups. Last weekend I have been busy helping out a friend - the girl I have been dating for a few months. We discussed 'us' and I told her I am not feeling what is necessary to be a part of a relationship. I was a bit anxious to discus this matter because I am worried... afraid to let people down. Well, that's what I have been doing for a long time already haha. At this moment I am happy I have discussed my feelings and I can move on, knowing that I have a dear friend nearby. I am still in touch with a man from the SLAA but I am not feeling very comfortable to take the 12-step program. It input that still feels too much to handle. I am doing many things already, adding another subject is definitely too much,
