I don't often feel strong anxiety, but yesterday I did. After the initial anxiety I had strong urges to escape into porn. That was a first. I've used porn for other reasons: loneliness, boredom, work-related stress and just plain horniness after a period of abstinence. But never anxiety or fear. I suppose PMO is an escape from reality and my brain will seek comfort there no matter where the stress comes from. And the stronger the stress, the stronger the need to escape. I knew I had to get away from the PC (Porn Conveyer) and walk to the store. There are much better ways to deal with anxiety or any other negative feelings.
I use PMO to escape from every emotion. Anxiety has always been one of them. You are right there are better ways to deal with them. One way is to just experience them. Emotions aren’t something you have to always ‘deal with’. That is what I struggle to accept and understand.
I did that for years, it got me nowhere. Our only way to deal with emotions was porn or masturbation, when you take that from your life you are left with LIFE. It is pretty scary and it can be a real hell sometimes, but hiding from it won't do us any good. Sure, it is much easier to do just that. It's a hard journey, but watching porn and masturbating is not something we are born with, our brains can heal and rewire in healthy ways if we give them enough time.
Gaming for me was number one. But it is pretty much the same, it takes us away from our lives into some fantasy world.
I one hundred percent used porn to get away from work, stress, anxiety, loneliness. One way to fight this would be to ring a friend/read a book/immerse yourself in another interest when you feel an urge. I know it sounds difficult but it will help in the long run. I think walking/running would also help fight the urge to watch porn and fap.
And the worst thing is that the end result is a much more severe anxiety problem. Throughout high school and college, I never really dealt with any anxiety issues. I was relatively calm in tense situations and enjoyed public speaking. But as I got heavily into porn, I developed a legitimate problem with anxiety-rapid heart rate, extreme nervousness any time I had to speak in front of a group or was confronted, etc. I hate dealing with it, but it's not like we don't know porn leads to all kinds of problems...
True. My AP encouraged me to use blockers but I dont get triggerd too badly when im surfing the net. If I'm stressed pretty soon my brain is like PMO right now.
