Hi, so, this is my first post:
In the last couple weeks I feel like I accepted the facts after years of failing that
I have a huge problem with m* and I can call it an addiction.
It’s not something I can ‘fix’. I’ve been doing it shamefully for ten years now, so probably going to take more than a month to make progress. Can be years. But I want it badly and I know it’s possible.
Most importantly, I have to learn how to deal with urges, trggrs and not just wishing I could live in a perfect world with no temptations.
I have to take responsibility for myself. For my thoughts and acts.
Hi,
The first time I remember was when I was only 4. I have memories from the time when I was 9-10, too, but I didn’t know what I was doing until 12-13.
If you think go n read my confession or you can ask if you have any more questions here, as well.
R
About 6 weeks ago I started running. Yesterday I ran 4,5 km. I speeded up at the and despite I was kind of suffering. I was so happy after I reached the finish line. Sport definetily helps improving my self-discipline and makes my mood better and more stable.
Urge PreventionYour shield against urges coming into contact with you
Understand the root cause of the addiction. Take a pen and paper and write down your current feelings and state of mind. Investigate the reasons why you feel this way and keep going until you come to PMO as part of the problem. Find out the other reasons as well that things in your life aren’t the way you want them to be. Look at your health, your studies, career, family and friend relationships, personal goals etc. Learn something entirely new about yourself and untangle the fog that PMO has placed on your self-awareness. Then, choose a day once a week where you can just read over your findings and keep them fresh in your mind. This will give you extra strength. *PMO is not the root of all your current problems. It may even have started that way, but now it is a symptom of them. A healthy person with high self-esteem and a good mental attitude cannot remain an addict.
Forgive yourself completely for the past. Leave all past relapses behind. Leave the sins behind, the broken promises to yourself and others, the times you neglected your work or your exercises, the wasted time on video games and movies and browsing Instagram, the pain you caused to family and friends, all of it. That was the old you in the past. You cannot ever change what he did. You can choose to be the new man you are at the present moment and work each day to have a beautiful future. You are the hero in your movie or video game now. Fully believe that you deserve to live this life and that with the help of the Almighty, you will accomplish it this time.
Make a firm, definite commitment to real change this time. Write it down and sign your name. Decide that you are now on your lifetime streak. There are no more thoughts like 'Just one extra day and I’ll start fresh tomorrow!’ Do something new that reinforces this belief for you. There might be something you always imagined the PMO-free you would do, like being less socially anxious, regular exercise and healthy eating, playing an instrument or learning a second or third language. Start doing this now. You could even start writing your 90-day success story, and work backwards to accomplish it before you get there. What habits would you implement to get there?
Every day, reaffirm your commitment to staying clean and maintaining your ultimate streak, and your belief that this is it. This will take less than a minute a day, but it is so powerful as it keeps your progress and success in the front of your mind to fight for you when urges come. Why would you relapse? The current you will never relapse - he just said so this morning! If a day is too long and you fear urges building up, then do this morning, afternoon and evening.
Also, when you make your daily commitment, be grateful for your progress so far. Remember, these are the last times you will ever pass these days again. The Last Day 5. The Last Day 10. The Last Day 30 and so on. That’s incredible after years of addiction. You’re a new man; appreciate it.
Make it a habit to remove lustful thoughts from your mind instantly. The woman passing by in the street, your classmates and work colleagues, previous crushes and girlfriends, that music video, flashbacks of P imagery, all of them have to go. Just like we wipe our hard drives, phone memory cards and browser history of all the P we used to watch, now we wipe our mental hard drive and keep it clean. The new person you have become does not fantasize about women like that; he respects them. 2 seconds of thinking these thoughts is too long. Look away and choose to think about something positive instead. Doing so creates a new habit in your brain which makes urges very weak and so much easier to dismiss.
Write up 2 lists; one list of all the reasons why you don’t want to go back to PMO or break your lifetime streak, and the second list of all the reasons why you want to continue being free and what your new life will look like. Make your lists personal and emotional, powerful enough that if you saw them before relapsing in the past, you’d think twice before throwing away your progress. Read it and you’d rather bathe in ice water than type those filthy words into the search bar or touch your manhood. Read this list at least once a week to keep your mind fresh and prevent urges. If your urges are still strong, read it more times, even daily if you have to.
Urge InterventionYour sword to fight urges which break through the defences
Write up a short, powerful vision for your life. One paragraph long, something which you can memorize and instantly bring to mind each time the temptation comes. Powerful enough to snap sense into you and remind you of what you want your life to be like. Soon enough that it doesn’t feel like ages before you make it there. 90 days is a good length.
Each time you get an urge, tell yourself, ‘At this moment, I want to go back to PMO. And that’s okay. Everyone is tempted. I don’t need to feel ashamed or guilty for any urges. It’s my actions which count.’ This is completely different to our former habits; most of us would deny the urges and hope they go away on their own, which worked for a little while and then they came back stronger and fiercer than before. Recognizing that urges can come at any time to anyone and that they are not bad is very powerful. No one resets their counter because they had a really bad urge. Urges are not sins or crimes or relapses. They’re a natural part of being human, and each one provides us with the opportunity to prove that we are a new person on a new journey, through what we decide to do next.
Tell yourself, ‘This decision is only for this urge. I am free to decide differently next time.’ Your ultimate goal is to never relapse again, but our brains are very funny when it comes to long periods like that. We begin to feel like we’re missing out and depriving ourselves of some reward or positive experience - even though we’ve spent years in addiction and never received this. This is why you will hear stories of someone relapsing after 4 years - he believed he was missing out on something and thought he would go back to check it out, and then he finds himself back at the beginning. When you give yourself the freedom to relapse at any moment if you so choose, the door to PMO is always open, and your brain doesn’t think it’s missing out because it can always go back. This paradox empowers us to never return to PMO.
Decide that at this moment, your vision is more important to you than 5 seconds of PMO pleasure. Recite your memorized paragraph, and watch the urges fade away. Your brain cannot focus on the powerful mental image of your vision and thoughts of PMO at the same time, so one has to fall away. The stronger your vision is, the quicker the urges will die. This happens within 90 seconds for me.
Make a habit of carrying out this process every single time you experience an urge, no matter where you are or whether you have access to P or not at that moment. Practice this twice a day every day even if you don’t have an urge that day. This practice is what will save you if the really strong urges come back.
I know that I’m more stable when I have a good sleeping routine so I’m going to work on that in the next days.
No screen before sleeping, going to sleep and waking up at around the same time every day.
Hope you’re all doing good. Keep fighting the good fight!
Small advice:
Two things I am adding:
I have read in some book that in the morning do the hardest things first, rest task later and when you wake up give yourself “me time” you can do meditation with affirmations this will give boost to our mood & gives you Motivation from the morning.
First, now that I’m here and must use my English, I’d be thankful if you’d correct my grammar when you notice something. Typo, wrong expressions… I’d like to improve my English skills! Thanks!
Furthermore, if anyone of you is interested in a short term challange, like 2 or 3 days, please, let me now! I’ve a theory that it might be easier at the beginning if I go with short term goals.
I’ve other challange ideas, as well. I’m gonna write about them later.
Finally, since I had some ‘not-that-great’ experiences here because of my gender (marriage propasals, haha), I was wondering how honest should I be here.
But you know what? I don’t care.
So, I’m gonna write more about my struggles as a female.
For e.g. yesterday there were a couple of hours when I really felt low and my thoughts started to turn towards MO. I guess it’s automatic to my brain when it wants some dopamine and oxytocine. But it really helped that I’m in a challange with @TrueMuslim now. (Congrats, brother on your new record, btw. ) And I also remembered what @HappySoul suggested about embracing the suffering so I did that and finally came through.
Obviously I was also thinking of how I will face you if I break the challenge I don’t wanna loose …Rebecca you are tough competitor …there is a group where weekly challenges are starting have small challenges with companions it stops you to become shameful in front of them …once a gap comes then dopamine goes to normal routine starts feeling good…
You must have long term goals to keep you from being frustrated by short term failures…I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self…Mastering others is strength.Mastering yourself is true power.
Porn is destroying minds and normal relations. Makes contacts with opposite gender difficult. Guys here are desperate to have relationship with a girl.
One of the symptoms of pmo addiction is looking at girls like on the goddesses. If so, it’s hard to talk like to normal person, treating girls like better creature than themselves. Having acceptance of the girl is one of the highest honour. PMO turns people into the simps.
I guess such propositions can be annoying, but it’s good these guys are here. They realised their addiction and want to improve. If they’ll control their lives, they will be able to talk/chat with girl like a human again
I really like the way how you try to strenghten your self-discipline to fight addiction. Regular running is the best. It builds new habit and makes you think that you can’t ruin new picture of you. Picture of disciplined person with accurate goals. I bet you’re doing great, so simply, keep going!
Dear sister, you are strong woman. Urges will come. Its like waves in a sea. Embrace the pain. Whatever happens porn is not an option. Since you are in a relationship, think about it. You are living a porn free life. You have the freedom to do anything, be anything. Be focused. We all are with you.
Previously I was running 5km daily but with breaks Regarding running it’s must to run daily don’t push so much pressure at start 1km with consistency would be better option … Warm up before running save muscle stretch and in my case cold showers helping me alot to active daily …my Daily intake water is 12 glasses … Daily on bed I feel cannot run today but once I go to the ground it looks so easy then seeing a motivational video of injured person running or any make my mind to not skip running at any case
you’re doing well
Hope you’re doing well. 
