Hello, I am new here. I believe I may be a slightly unusual case. I have Asperger's Syndrome and as such I have always had a from of "stimming" or repetitive action to clear my thoughts. When I was very young, i.e. 4 years old, I began to M. the sensation was non-sexual it was merely a stress relief method. When I reached 5th grade, I remember looking up something completely innocent on my ipod touch, and following a chain of links till I reached a soft P and erotica site and soon became hooked. The M became entirely sexual and through middle school I and the erotica soon ceased to entertain me and I sought out greater thrills form the P. However, I refused to look up anything hard. To this day I have never seen a clip of explicit or graphic sex. As such as I refused to go into hard P the soft stuff became increasingly deviant and strange. I fell into increasingly strange fetishes, and 'M'ed every night and many times a day. It was however in the summer before my 8th grade year that my lukewarm Roman Catholic faith really began to become a central part of my life. It was the moment when I first realized this was a problem. And as such, after a particularly nasty full PMO session in the bathroom, my parents asked me if I wanted to go to the county fair to see the animals. It hit me then, I was still a child who should be over excited about petting a goat in my parents' eyes but I had just moments earlier spilled the seed of life on the bathroom rug while watching a bunch of women defile themselves on camera. I was overwhelmed with guilt and shame. I actually successfully quit M cold turkey that day and haven't relapsed in 5 years. The PO on the other hand has been more stubborn. As I seriously believe in the Catholic faith I would always rush to confession after falling into P and the typically inevitable O that followed. The absolution received from the Sacrament always allowed me to mentally and spiritually reset my self and provided a definite clean slate to try again. This was a blessing as it kept me in a relation of grace with God and ensured that in the unlikely event of my death I do not die guilty of that mortal sin. However as I began to have more freedom, first with a bike and then with a car, this great gift of God's love began to become twisted in my life. I had memorized the schedule of confession times at my parish, every Saturday morning and afternoon. and as such I began to have a shift in my temptation. It went from "Look up P and you'll get pleasure" to "I know you'll feel terrible and want to go to confession after P but its fun so why not just fall into it a few hours before the service, and run to the priest, who is conveniently sitting in the confessional right now, right as you inevitably feel contrite after O occurs." That's explicitly not how the sacrament works. And to make matter worse with the car, I can simply go to the basilica down town that holds the service every day of the week, or go to the priest who gives it every lunch tiem at my High School. And I know what response I will get. "Your faith is causing the problem, as it lets you mentally get away with PO without the consequences." I entirely agree with that sentiment, but if any solution you propose involves going against my faith I will not consider it. I consider my Catholicism to he the very most central trait to my being, and I refuse to for go it in any way. I plan to attend a Catholic university and major in Theology, as when as I feel called to work in the Church somehow, be it as a layperson, priest, friar, or monk. As such I am going full tilt monk mode reboot and hope to have this under control by next fall so I can not have to worry about this vice going into university. This is in my mind a reasonable goal as I only struggle with P and O, and the P is only "naked and half naked women, not footage of explicit sex." and my flaw of using my faith to try to get around this problem will, I believe be negated by the knowledge that those following my reboot journal will be disappointed and I will have to start over and see the counter return to zero. I am going to be held more accountable to the disappointment of those more judgmental than an all forgiving God. And so today I begin the process of finishing off the last vestiges of a vice that has spanned for most of my life, so next fall when the next chapter of it begins, I can speak of it past tense for good.
Welcome to NoFap where you are amongst friends who are here to encourage you and sometimes challenge you but not judge you. The enemy is here to steal, kill and destroy. What are your current strategies for combating the enemy called PMO?
Th I currently try to put myself in situations where it is impossible to fall into temptation because I am with people in a time of weakness, or if the temptation nails me suddenly I will pray a rosary or chaplet since I always carry one in my pocket and the repetition usually clears my mind. If that fails I usually put on a dry and strategic PC game like Europa Universalis IV and hope that the slow gameplay and complexity quickly change my thoughts. But even with these strategiesz I still struggle and fall often. Thank you for welcoming me.
