Hi All, I found this site helpful in the past and have returned to it after about a year. Varying success with removing PMO from my life [currently very successful]. I just want to share one of a number of things that worked well for me: Since you will use P if you can access it, make it impossible to access. For instance, the PC I am using to write this has K9 blocker [and a deliberately lost and forgotten password] and an adblocker [because some ads are sexualised]. That way, I cannot access P from this PC. Secondly, I have a tablet that I don't need to use. I let the battery run out, put it in a padded envelope with its charger, closed the envelope and put it away in a closet. I can appreciate that a certain change in mindset is needed for this to work, but it has been the most successful thing I have done in ridding my life of PMO. Keep being resourceful in working away from PMO and towards a happier, healthier you.
p.s. the tracker represents the time since I got the tracker [yesterday, at the time of writing]. I have been PMO free for a lot longer
You can change the tracker for the date you actually started being PMO free if you want, or else the tracker is pretty pointless As for my 2 cts on the subject : It's a great start, and many will need to start here. But it's not enough! Locking the fridge up with chains will prevent you from getting fat in the short run, and that's a good thing indeed. But it won't be enough for the fight we're having here. People use different techniques to lock P out of their lives, more or less successfully, but in the long run this plan shatters mainly because they thought that it will be enough. Because they thought they wouldn't have to make any change to their lives. I was like that too. But after all that fighting I know for a fact that it's not only what we use. It's why we use it. Sure, for us it's P, but when you look closely, P is just another heroin, just another alcohol or gambling. Probably even a more dangerous one (hello reproductive physiology...). Don't kid yourselves for too long, and remember you can't lock it up outside just by white-knuckling - Oh, out for a business-trip with a company non-K9-protected computer? That's gonna end well for sure. Stay away from P anyway you can at first, so that you can experience life without it, and discover your real strengths to fight it later : Eventually you need to adress the issue that led you into this zone, because the real recovery, the tough one, is when you can be online and choose control your urges rather than being forced to. That's when your problem is gone, that's when your addicted mind is fully recovered. Until then you're at risk! We all can do this, it's a matter of how much we want it, compared to being complacent. If you're reading this, you've done a great deal of the way since you've asked yourselves the right questions. Now uncovering the answers (or reading them because others Fapstronauts can't help being helpful!) is a matter of wanting things to change. It requires a good dose of courage. That means fear of the unknown, and a will to do it anyway. You all can do it. Stay strong
K9 is pretty good and I've tried to put some random password and mail it to myself so as to not know it when I had the urge for P. Each time I have failed and finally I said there's no point to it and I "whitelisted" all P!!! K9 became completely useless. I never manned up to lose the password, may be some day I will. I admire you for that.
Hi PicNick, The way I did it was to open a Word doc and randomly type out a few passwords e.g. "asdfjna234;#'2dkfjnaofnal';3skdfna" and simply copied and pasted them into the required fields when setting up passwords. I also did this for a free email account that I used as the account to which K9 was linked. So the passwords for the email account were also gibberish. When I set up K9 with the gibberish passwords, and the email account with the gibberish passwords, all I had to do was activate K9, log out of the free email account and close the Word doc without saving anything. Then I restarted my PC. K9 came into operation and there was no way on earth I could remember or recover my passwords. I have been locked out of P, most Open Image searches, certain fapping forums I used to visit, and all websites containing certain keywords. Total lockdown, and it worked.
Hi Leo, It is over a year now. It's worth pointing out that in addition to the 'lockout' mentioned above, my attitude to life has altered quite a bit too. I reconnected with the faith I was raised in for starters, and have found it to be very dignifying and transformative. I also did a few other things, such as quitting a job I found demoralising, involving myself in the [laborious!] process of gaining skills I always wanted to have, and in general seeing myself in a different light.
I know how to do it, but as I said I am just not man enough to do so. I should be some time. Congrats on your tick that reads 421!
champion reboot man! good idea to ditch the tablet too PMO is to easy to get into with a tablet on hand.
Yes, but if you do a simple search with Google you will find a lot of ways, quite easy even for a dummy, to uninstall K9 even if you do not know the password (just do some simple changes on Regedit in safe mode following the easy instructions you can read on many web sites)...With some step-by-step instruction found on line, K9 is not so inviolable, even for those who do not know much about computers: unfortunately, when you want to desperately get around a block, you will always find the way
Well, at this remove I wouldn't go to the bother as I now see P as alien and obnoxious to my life. I do sypathise with the idea that the 'desperation' will cause someone to scrabble about looking for a way to dig under the fence they have put up between themselves and P. But that is where other actions come into play. Blocking P online is just one thing to do, but there has to be a sea-change in how you view yourself as well. I remember at the early stages thinking "I'm not the kind of person who uses P" as a way of reminding myself that I am not a dead-beat. Associating P with the kind of unsavory character you do NOT want to be is one way of stopping the 'desperation'. Also: EXERCISE. I found that when 'desperation' struck, hitting back RIGHT AWAY with exercise really got rid of it. As was leaving the house and going for a walk. Go to the cinema. Prepare a meal from scratch. There are hundreds of small but effective tasks that will help keep you going in the right direction.
Who needs to follow a diet knows that he does it for his own good, but suffers because he can no longer eat what he liked (and make him fat). Many years ago, in my town there was a well-known drunkard who, when he passed in front of a tavern, said to himself: "If I'll walk past that pub without stopping, I will offer myself a drink for reward" Whoever has to stop smoking, knows that smoking hurt him, and so he wants to quit. But he also knows that smoking gives him a strong pleasure as nothing else can offer, he doesn't know how to compensate and he will often miss cigarettes. Any psychologist might explain you that actions that give pleasure (and masturbation, sex, smoking are among them) release dopamine into the body, which causes a real addiction. An addict needs to teach again his brain to reason properly, and willpower itself is not always enough. So whoever smokes, who goes beyond fapping, and so on, can encounter moments of extreme difficulty in renouncing the pleasure that those actions give him, and he must find other things that can captivate him equally, but obviously in a healthier way.
Hey I recommend thepasslock which basically exists for this purpose. You enter your password, and to retrieve it, you have to go through this tedious 30 minute thing like entering the number of times "2" shows up in a list of numbers. It's pretty annoying that I never feel like getting the password, but if I ever really need it I know I can get it. Might help you guys. Cheers
