I'll have to quote myself, because this was a very difficult day. Mood swings, mild anxiety, and heavy urges to masturbate. I have practice Four Steps so many times today. Urges lasted for a couple of hours, during that time I have "practiced" so many Refocus activities. Played Brain Games, watched 2 episodes of Psycho-Pass (it looks like I am going to give up on this anime), interacted with other people, did some things around the house. It took me 2 hours to finish all this, but the urges were not gone. I've kept practicing Four Steps and did some more Refocusing activities, what helped me most was washing dishes. After finish this all, I have rewarded myself with a hot bath. There are still 4 hours before I go to sleep, but urges are gone and I am safe. As you can see from my urges chart, this has only been the 3rd Day I have marked RED. I have to say extra motivation for me was the fact I already had 2 RED Days. It reminded me I felt like this in the past, but I did not gave up and I kept going forward! Days that followed were much easier. Relapsing on that One day with strong urges is not worth all the progress I have made so far. I know from experience, it will be much easier in the next couple of days! Today I have won another big battle! I am recommending you to start doing something like this, it might play an important role in your recovery.
Day 12--> Day 10 This is the right thing to do... I wont count this as a relapse but I will lose 2 days in this challenge Outis
Relapsed. I am weak. I am not so unhappy... its like i was really willing to relapse. Thats the bad thing! After 26 days i relapsed. 26 days on first try! Now my goal is to be free for life. It will be hard. Every day for the next 2 years will be like seeing hell from a window. I think hell as a place full of P and M and empty of love... is this the world i want to live in? Is this only a post relapse thought? Maybe. But i am not going to give up! This is my plan: 14 days Challenge. Meditating every day for 5 minutes Read 2 books per month Try understanding more about myself. Love. Outis Aka No one
Alright, Day 1 of 21 done, it's getting a little antsy, seeing the one month as a possible period to stop
Day 6/21 I had no urges today. I was outdoor for the 8 hours. So, there were no chances of Urges. I'm super excited as now days are passing fast.
Hi everyone, Day 4 out of 21 days (approaching to 1 week for this challenge in 3 days!) Total: 25 days. Tomorrow, 26 days Urges: minimal but stressed out because of first day of school today. Was knocked out for a long nap. Now will heading to gym. Erections - nonexistent. Still have flatline. No wet dreams yet. Focus: 1) Get through to first day week in this challenge, 2) Get to my 30 day mark. Stay strong brothers
Hey @User047, great idea on your calendar. I was looking at your calendar and noticed there you seem to have heavy urges every 10-12 days. I'm a college professor so I like to analyze! That means your heavy urges should be around 38-40th day (the next one). Just my 2 cents. I just noticed that there's a pattern.
Hey everyone.4/21 and I want to share something with you.It's about yesterday.so I used to delete the videos I downloaded immediately after watching them.I never kept any of those videos in my pc because I didn't wanna get caught. Yesterday I was looking for a file for one of my friends and I saw a video with a weird name "video-147".Got curious and played it.Guess what? It was one of those hot videos.don't why but I started shaking.I knew if I watch even a little bit I won't be able to resist.So I just shift+deleted the video right away.I was breathing like I had been running.I regreted deleting it.part of me really wanted to watch it.not gonna lie about it.I took a cold shower and went to bed. Today I'm glad that I didn't do that.
Hi everybody Since I ended the 14-day challenge, I will start this one, in a few hours one day (/21) will have pass. I will not reset my counter, which is updated from the start of the 14-day challenge, but I will post every successful day here. See you
Let's review what you wrote: You are not weak, you made it to 26 Days in you first try. That is amazing!!! No, you were not! If you were truly willing to relapse you wouldn't be here. You would not even try to end this addiction, you would be happily masturbating and watching porn for the rest of your life. You want to change! But it is not easy. This relapse was caused because you were not aware of all the tricks your brain can play upon you. The same thing happened to me over a year ago when I ended my 45 Days Streak. It felt like I have really wanted to watch porn and relapse, but now when I think about it that was only a cheap trick by my addicted brain. Unfortunately, I did not have enough knowledge back then and I have relapsed. You have to remember this next time, your brain will play every trick on you just so it can get it's fix. It will even try to trick you by sending thoughts such as: "I really want to relapse. Watching porn will make me feel good. I will do this NEXT TIME!! YES, NEXT TIME WILL BE EASIER FOR SURE! See? The second part of your post tells you that you do not want to watch porn! That is your "true self" doesn't want to watch porn and stay addicted until the end of your life. But when we are having strong urges, we forget about true goals and reason for doing this. Our additive brain takes over and do it's best to get it's fix. Good luck on your second attempt. Try not to binge.
Wow, thank you very much! I wasn't paying attention to that, but that is a huge information for me. This peace of information might help me the next time I am faced with heavy urges. I'll have to remind myself that one day of heavy urges is not worth being addicted to porn. Especially, when those days are so rare.
Now it's time for my daily report Like you already know, wall of text incoming Day 7 (Total 28) - Week one of three has been successfully completed!Yesterday was difficult, but who cares? Today is a new day and I am here! My day count keeps going up. My brain is rewiring in healthy ways. Here is something I have found reading a book this morning and got me thinking.... If you ever struggled with anxiety and panic attacks you have probably heard about Doctor Claire Weeks and her work. Initial symptoms of anxiety and panic are something that she calls "First Fear". There is nothing you can do about it, those are the physical sensations that you experience and initial thoughts you have. But, you do have some control over your emotional reactions, what she calls "Second Fear". If you tell yourself that your physiological symptoms are horrible and very threatening, that you can’t stand them, that you’re going to lose control, or that you might die, you will scare yourself into a very high state of anxiety. On the other hand, if you accept what’s happening and make calming, reassuring statements to yourself, such as “It’s only anxiety—I’m not going to let it get to me,” “I’ve been through this before and it’s not dangerous,” or “I can handle this until it passes,” you can minimize or eliminate the escalation of your symptoms. The reason I am writing this here is because it is exactly the same when we are dealing with this addiction. We do not have any control of our initial thoughts, triggers, and we are not responsible for our "wanting" to watch porn. That is our "First Wave" and our brain is responsible for it. Now you can argue that we can avoid those triers altogether, and I agree. We need to avoid them as much as we can. But, you can't avoid everything. Most of the time I am not even thinking about porn or doing anything which has anything to do with my triggers, but I still get triggered. Most of the time it just start with one though. What you do next can trigger or prevent the "Second Wave". Let's say initial thought is: "I miss porn, I would really like to watch it right now." What you do next, determine if you are going to experience the Second Wave or not. If you focus on this thought and give it your full attention, what follows is rationalizing, such as: "Well, watching porn makes me feel amazing. What is the point of doing NoFap anyway? Sooner or latter I will relapse, it's just a matter of time. NO! I don't want to relapse, I am doing this because I want to change myself! Well, I can just masturbate... I won't watch porn. But, that is bad too, it will mess my progress. But... If I watch it, it will be great... I need to watch it, I am alone. I will do NoFap once I find a girlfriend. But... I will never find a girlfriend as longs as I am watching porn. I won't find her even if I stop watching porn because I am lessor... I will just glance.... or i might just edge for a second...." And this goes on and on. The more time you spend doing this, the worse you will feel and the closer to relapse you will be. You are just making things worse, not better. What you need to do, is practice the Four Steps method. I have written about it in my guide which you can find in my signature. But the thing is, most people are lazy and they will continue looking for an easy way to end this addiction. There is no easy way! It is going to be hard! Until you accept that, you will keep relapsing over and over again. YOU CAN'T DO THIS WITHOUT HAVING ANY URGES! YOUR BRAIN IS WIRED TO WANT PORN, IT IS ONLY NORMAL TO EXPERIENCE STRONG URGES AND STRONG WITHDRAWAL SYMPTOMS WHEN YOU STOP WATCHING PORN. Now, let's see how would I use the four steps in the situation I wrote above. Step 1: Rationalizing to watch porn Step 2: This is not me! This is just my brain! Wise Advocate (Buddha): The more time you spend thinking about porn, the more likely you are to relapse. Thinking about it just activates your bad brain circuits, you are making things worse, not better. If you keep doing this, you will eventually relapse. But you already know there is another way and you do not have to repeat the same mistakes all the time. Do something else with Step 3. Step 3: Now, I find some activity to refocus my attention from those thoughts and feeling. Remember: THE GOAL HERE IS NOT TO GET RID OF THOSE THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS! They will go on their own, but I don't know when! They might go right away, or they might stay for hours. And I am willing to practice those Four Steps for as long as it takes! Repeat Step 1 -3 countless number of times. My Refocus activity in this case might be playing brain games. More examples of the first and second wave: -You wake up with the morning wood? It's not your fault, this is the first wave. If you get up out of the bed or simply stay in bed and let it pass. You did good. If you start edging...good luck with that. Even if you stop you will trigger the Second Wave and you will make the things much worse. -You see a sex scene in the movie. That is the first wave. You are not responsible to how you body reacts to it and what thoughts you might have. If you start practicing Four Steps, YOU ARE DOING GREAT! If on the other hand, you focus on that scene, think about how amazing that woman's was. You are inviting the second wave. Second wave is your enemy, it is causing you necessary suffering. I know, writing this all is really easy and it seems great on the paper. Applying and practicing is difficult. IT IS! But Four Steps is a skill! The more you practice, the better you get at it. I am practicing it trough the day as much as I can, I am using it to stop procrastination, to do things that needs to get done and it is working really really good. I am still far from perfecting this skill, but the way I see it, this is something I want to be using until the end of my life. It helps in every aspects of my life. Another wall of text, sorry. It just me If you find it helpful, read. If not, you can just skip my entry's.
It's the awesome. You made it very clearly. I'm very inspired by your enormous thoughts which you are describing. Thanks for sharing it. !