Self-Introduction Reboot of a Chinese boy

Welcome brother! Visit the forum daily and read all the posts! It helps a lot. If you feel urges have a cold shower for 3 minutes! Stay strong! Have fun!

 

Firstly may I say your English is excellent, especially for such a young guy who have never been abroad. Secondly congratulations on passing the one week milestone my friend. Although I am a western guy, I have many Chinese friends and a Chinese girlfriend, so I have heard many first hand stories about the intensity of the school examination system there and the competition for college places. Its pretty stressful to say the least. One thing I can honestly say is that although I was pretty good in school and I did quite well academically, I certainly underachieved due a lack of motivation and the "foggy brain" state that you mentioned. I thought at the time I was just a bit lazy. But looking back I can definitely say that pmo addiction was responsible for both of these states. So I can relate to your situation. This is a critical time for you and I commend you for having the maturity to address it now. I wish I had this information available to me when I was your age!

There are many great strategies and insights on this site. As someone who is older but still fighting the same battle, I can share one or two strategies that I think are vital for victory. The first is that, although will power is extremely important, your will power alone may not be strong enough in the beginning, especially when you are feeling a powerful urge. You need to deflect and push away the thought as soon as it begins to form in your mind. If you allow your mind to concentrate on the thought of sexual desire or porn, it will quickly take root and grow into a strong urge that is much more difficult to defeat. So the moment you feel a sexual thought or urge starting to arise within you, you need to use all your determination to immediately switch your focus to something else. Some people call this "killing the monster while its still small". It requires a continuous awareness and you may need to do it many times each day in the beginning. This one strategy was mainly responsible for my most successful period of NoFap (about 60 days).

The second piece of advice I can give you is to identify what are the main triggers that cause you to relapse and do your best to avoid them. For example if you know that being at home alone in your room on the weekend gives you the opportunity to surf porn, then do whatever it takes to make sure that you are not at home and alone. Fill your time with alternative activities. Get out of your room or your house. Take up a sport. Go out with friends. Go to the gym. Cultivate a new hobby. Do something, anything, that will remove you from that situation which is allowing you to surf porn. You are much more likely to relapse if you are alone in front of computer than when you are out in public and doing something else. Its like when you go on a diet. You gotta make sure that there is no junk food in your refrigerator so that when you get home and you are tired after a long day at work, you don't have the option to surrender to your hunger and your laziness and grab a candy bar. You have to set up your environment to support you instead of weakening you. For myself, this is the single biggest reason why I continually relapse is because I work at home online, and its far too easy to just click on some porn when I am feeling tempted. I wish I could change my lifestyle and my environment so I am not exposed to this constant temptation.

So to summarise, by killing the thoughts as soon as they arise, and eliminating the triggers that cause you to relapse, it will make it easier for you to succeed. You will still need your will power and determination, but every advantage you can give yourself will increase your odds of success. We are all in this together and I am cheering for you. Good luck brother and don't give up!

Edit: I just noticed your last post after I wrote this. Don't worry about it. Whats done is done. Use it to learn and get smarter and stronger. You can do it.