Rose high and fell lower than ever... I need support

Confession
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After being a PMO addict from my very early teens until the age of 21 I finally began my recovery by started nofap, and after many failures I finally reached a 40+ day streak which is the longest I’ve ever gone with pmo. I felt amazing but about a week ago I relapsed and have been relapsing ever since and have fallen lower than I ever have before. My pmo addiction affects me financially so to make it even worse I have blown every bit of money I have and am dangerously in debt. This addiction has always made me borderline suicidal but at the moment Ive never been so close to attempting it.
I also realised during the past week that although I want to quit so badly, I also don’t want to fully let it go and as a result I dont even have faith that I can ever be free of it and believe that I will eventually always fail whether that be after a 7/50/100/1000 day streak. Another thing I realised in the past week is that for so long I’ve blamed my parents for not being able to make many friends growing up (they were very strict) when in reality it’s been the pmo addiction stealing anything of value away from me and its been my fault the entire time.
It’s made me realise the addict mentality I have. “I’d rather fall from the ground floor than the from the 40th floor”.

I’m not really sure what I’m hoping to accomplish with this post tbh it’s really just a rant and pity party. If you can relate or have any advice/encouragement for me, please go ahead and drop it below.

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Please don’t worry brother each one here goes through this phase after a relapse. Just be glad that you reached 40days which I’ve never reached in my lifetime. Don’t be sad just meditate and do some excercise and everything will be okay also read some good non fiction. For more you can contact me I’ll be happy to help you to the extent I could

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Thank you for the kind response, I appreciate it more than you know. I exercise quite a lot to be honest and it’s about the only thing in life that I actually enjoy and it makes me feel good. What is weird though is the feeling good about myself is a trigger that actually causes me to want to relapse and I don’t know why so sometimes exercise actually negatively affects me.

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I highly suggest you to meditate brother. I know its sounds cliched but it works wonders. You’ll be able to watch your thoughts. Do give it a try.

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I’ve heard people suggest meditation before to help with different problems. I’ve never meditated before so I’m pretty ignorant on the subject but I don’t understand how it helps?

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Hello,

You are going through hard times it seems.
I had despair times too, nobody and nothing could help me… I was deep in sadness and loneliness, for me my life was over. I wanted to die, really. But i said to myself that if i want to die, i will try everything before so i can die in peace, respecting my principes.
4 years after this, i’m still here, it was hard, i suffered every day but everyday was a bit better, i used discipline a lot… I continued, and now only pmo remain. ( it helped me a bit in those times).
Reduce your negative acts and if you can increase your positive acts… This is the thing that saved me,and still saving me today.

For meditation, it helps emptying your mind, stop the negative thoughts and allow you to stay calm even in a storm (when you are a bit trained). It makes your mind sharper and decrease tension in your mind and in your body. You are just here in the moment… Without the dailys problems in your min. You don’t forget them but you stay calm knowing they are stil here without thinking about them.

Courage friend.

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Already @SunRise has explained another thing I want to add is when you meditate your mind wonders off from the breath and when you bring it back you’re training your mind to pass the thoughts and be present in the present.

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@rev2016, you are already strong enough to stop fapping, you just don’t believe it. You already have the tools to change, you just can’t see them. You already have the will to make your life better, that’s why you posted here.

I agree with @jatinmangla and @SunRise about meditation being helpful. At least, it has been for me, not just with PMO but also with pretty much every aspect of my life. It helps me because, as @jatinmangla mentioned, it allows you to observe the mind with the mind. Awareness of what is actually happening in this moment, rather than my opinion of what is happening, has been profoundly helpful for me in getting to know myself better, to trust myself, and to be kind to myself, which is essential to creating any positive change as I have learned.

No longer do I guilt and shame and hate myself when I make mistakes or relapse. If I relapse, I try to be present before, during, and after to register how I am feeling. How was I feeling beforehand? This may have led to relapse, like feeling stressed or anxious. Assessing feels during fapping is a little difficult because I let the auto pilot take over. Afterward, I may feel sad or angry about having relapsed, but I am careful not to blame and shame myself. Of course, I am the one who chose to do it, but I don’t make myself feel worse because that will lead directly to more relapses. I just try to treat myself like a friend and remain curious about how fapping manifests in my life and how it effects my emotions, energy, etc. Does this make sense in how it relates to meditating?

Meditation can also help when urges come up. I haven’t done this for a while, but I lived at a Buddhist monastery last year for 6 months as a temporary monastic. I was meditating a lot, so urges would arise while I was sitting on the meditation cushion from time to time, but I was not going to get up and go fap. I was committed to sitting there with everyone else as long as the session lasted. And wow, was that intense sometimes! But I learned that I could endure the feeling of the sexual energy without fapping. I could feel it so intensely but could do nothing but sit there and feel it, and eventually it subsided and dissolved. Then it might return again, and disappear again. All I could do was sit there and meet it, but I learned how to not be afraid of it or afraid that I couldn’t handle it without fapping. It was a really important lesson for me.

Probably you don’t live in a monastery, but try sitting meditation, even for just a few minutes a day. You may find it helpful. The more you do it, the more effective it can be, and eventually you might want to find a group to practice with to get more support and reinforce your personal practice.

I have to go back to work, but I’ll try to post some meditation videos later. Hang in there, brother. We will get through this together. Feel free to message me directly if you want or need to.

Peace,
MJ

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Hello, how are you doing now.

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I’m doing better.
Highest streak is something like 85 days and currently on day 27.
I’ve relapsed alot since I started. My main mistake (it sounds really silly) is that I had the mindset that if I set restrictions (such as blocking 18+ websites on my phone and getting a family member to set the password so I couldn’t unlock them) I’d already lost which I realise now is a ridiculous mindset.

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