Thoughts on Day 9
Happy new year everyone. Another year fighting this habit passed, and it’s time to do a little update on my progress.
At the end of last year, coming from two streaks over a month, I fell again to a relapse cycle some of you refer to as the chaser effect. I was going through some stress at work and in my private life due to the moving in with my gf and leaving behind my old apartment. A place that I can really call home is really important to me and if I think about it, I didn’t have that for the most part of my life, especially the last six to seven years. Even after moving to the new flat I needed some time, but after a month I now start to adjust and find myself sitting down in peace more often. It’s a great feeling.
I had another talk with my girlfriend and it came up that she occasionally watches ■■■■. That hit me like a truck. The unease with that knowledge was intense for a bit, but it got me thinking as well. She is fine with it, it never developed into an unhealthy habit like it did for me. And that’s what I got out of this situation: of course it helps to know that there are others that suffer from the same problem, it helps to be felt understood by you guys, and it is also an undeniable fact that ■■■■ itself holds a lot of toxic implications and is a problem way too often overlooked in our society - but in the end, the problem is me. It’s way too easy to start victimising myself. “How could I get so unlucky to discover ■■■■ at a time where I was in a bad place and get addicted. I wish somebody would have told me and helped me.”
A nice thought, sure, and worth fighting for to make the discussion public, but it doesn’t help in getting clean, at least not me. That’s the prevention part, what comes during and after my own fight, to help others. But right now, I have to fix what makes me addicted, not the addiction itself.
So, what keeps me addicted? What is it that ■■■■ gives me that makes me come back time after time, even though I am in a healthy relationship, with a decent job and hobbies that I’m good at and that are fun?
It’s my self esteem.
The kind of ■■■■ I was consuming was always the kind that got the viewer involved. Where a woman would talk to me directly, make me feel like this could happen to me. As a teenager I was always too shy to actually get involved with a girl, because I felt like nobody would be able to like me. Got bullied in school, didn’t have many friends, always felt like the weird kid that nobody wanted to really talk to.
And I was. I was a weird kid, and kids are cruel. But that changed. I have friends now, I think I am accepted and so on…but I think deep down I still feel unworthy of unconditional love. I behave like people always could betray me, could manipulate me and just be friends with me because I do stuff. Like, when I was a weird Kid, nobody liked me. Now I feel more secure because I am good at some stuff, but I fear that people like me just because of that, not because of who I really am.
Not a rational thought. Pure emotion and flashbacks to those times.
So, ■■■■ never betrayed me without me knowing (while at the same time I knew all I saw was just a fantasy, so it was like a controlled betrayal of sorts). It didn’t stab me in the back. But at the same time it stabbed me into my heart every single time I turned off the PC or phone and was lying in my bed in the dark, alone, left, broken.
I think only time and love can heal these wounds. I can’t just tell myself that nobody will betray me. So might. But at least I can keep pushing myself willingly into the right direction and able myself to have positive experiences, to not just tell myself that I’ll be good, but to really know it.
■■■■, once I was consuming it to help me with my social insecurity, also kept the cycle going. I spent more time on ■■■■ and less on doing other things like reading, writing, being creative (as in creating stuff) in general. And that gave me even less reason to like myself, because we are the things that we do, our actions make us, and I wasn’t who I wanted to be or who I thought I’d be. I was acting against my own standards and values, and that made me a liar before my own eyes. Which made me feel even worse. If somebody didn’t like me i felt bad, if I assumed he didn’t like me, same, and if I assumed he could like me i knew he liked a version of myself that I on the other hand hated. While at the same time I was too deep into the whole cycle to change anything.
That’s why having other people like you guys and some of my friends, my girlfriend the most apparently, helped me so much. It was what made it possible to start climbing out. To see that there is a reason to climb out. Step by step.
Knowing all this helps to keep pursuing my plans and dreams, because I know that once I get some stuff done that I can see and hear, that gives me feedback and shows me that I do have an impact on the world around me, even if it is just drawing something for a wall in my flat, or cooking for my gf, or meeting with friends and listening to their stories -once I got started on that and the first feedback comes in, I can build on the self esteem that I get through that. I will start to like myself again. To respect myself. And to heal.
Thanks for sticking with me guys. Love and peace to all of you 
Good for you. Keep going bro you got my support 
