Thoughts popping up

YES! it is very important trust me!

 

Yes, you have to avoid hypersexualized imagery and thoughts. After a while it becomes your normal pattern and you won't have to struggle with it, but for at least 30 days try not to think sexual thoughts because that just releases dopamine, which leads to feelings of withdrawals, which feel horrible. Thinking sexual thoughts won't help you stay clean, not thinking them will.

Peace.

 

I think suppressing them will work in the short term, but they will eventually reappear. It's pretty basic: try really hard not to think about something and you'll probably think about that thing more.

"Suppressing" a thought is kind of like cleaning your messy room by pushing things under your bed and cluttering your drawers and closet. It will work in the short term, but eventually the dam will burst.

From experience, I've learned that pushing thoughts away and "battling" your addiction may be necessary sometimes (so like William said, within the first week especially), but this is not a sustainable practice. The only alternative I can offer is meditation. This is where you "watch" the urge. You don't engage in it, or try to push it away.

So, for example, if a scene flashback pops up in your head, don't engage in it. At a certain point it will require some mental expenditure from you to keep playing in your head, so you need to notice when that happens. Instead, let it come and go. Watch it rise and fall; don't interfere with it in any way.

This way you are allowing them to pass through you without creating any chain of action/reaction. This has really helped me make it into the bigger streaks.

 

The thoughts and flashes are brief enough (more brief than a video I'm assuming) that you should be able to entirely ignore them. The trick is not to engage in them, because if you start freaking out about it, then you are engaging them and they will start to lead to more thoughts and flashes.

 

I know what I am thinking, but it is difficult to put into words. We are sexual beings so we are going to have sexual thoughts. Our brain's reward center likes us to have sexual thoughts, with or without porn. The main thing for a guy quitting porn, especially in the re-boot stage, is not view porn, not PMO, and not allow sexual thoughts to linger in there, or as Kosh says, not to engage the thoughts. You are going to have a sexual thought once in a while, but it is one thing to have a sexual thought, and another to turn it into a 10 minute movie in your head. You you are going to be exposed to hypersexualized imagery; it cannot be avoided, but you can avoid lingering on it, or letting that brief exposure turn into a fantasy. Even if you don't experience porn if you let a sexual fantasy run around in there I guarantee you will hit withdrawals. You don't want them, they suck. Like a nightmare on caffeine.

By the way, congrats on the 20 day run. I see guys who don't make it 20 hours.

Keep up the good work, and keep posting. Reading posts and replying are part of my recovery, so thanks.

Peace.

 

That's right, they won't. Just carry on with whatever you were doing, and if you aren't doing anything then find something to do.

 

It is difficult, but you must understand that to succeed you have to totally eliminate porn from your head, from your life experience. You can't go looking for it, and you have to expel it from your head. A lot of guys try to stop PMOing, they quit or limit MOing, but they still watch porn or still allow pornographic imagery to play around in their head. Let's face it, porn abuse starts because we are bored, so we waste time at a porn site to pass the time. What we now know that porn is not an amusing way to pass the time, we loved the sites because they are a great way to get a dopamine high. This problem cannot be overcome if you keep porn in your head. Also, many of us when first starting fail to understand that porn is more than just seeing it. Porn is seeing it, watching it, imagining it, edging while thinking about it, PMOing, MOing while thinking about it, remembering it, fantasizing about it, even having actual sex while thinking about it. You don't have to have an orgasm to release dopamine, porn itself if the button that we push to release dopamine. Best practice, try and have no sexual thoughts and experience no sexual images for at least the first 30 day. I am not saying after that time you can, but once you retrain your brain, once you bring your dopamine levels back down to pre porn levels, you won't want to seek out that imagery as much. It gets easier. Just like porn use, quitting porn is a habit. Like shooting a basketball. You may not be good the first time you shoot, but I guarantee if you practice consistently for 30 days, at the end of that you'll be able to hit the shot. Part of practicing quitting porn is to practice not allowing sexual thoughts off the leash so to speak. Are you going to have sexual thoughts while rebooting? Absolutely yes, but do not indulge them. Let them be a flash, not a fantasy, get them out of the noggin as soon as possible. If you do this, consistently, for days, it will become a habit. Of course, the main culprit is high speed internet porn, but all hypersexual images should be avoided during your recovery. The good news is, on the other side of recovery, you will not have the sexual dysfunction issues a lot of us experience when in the midst of serious porn abuse and addiction, and you will lose the desire to access porn and gain the desire to avoid it.

Good luck on your journey.

 

great tips, Kosh

 

Understand that porn is not real. You know this. You brain can't tell the difference though. So, if you are having pornographic thoughts, your brain is releasing dopamine. That has to be avoided during reboot. I think at this point you are going to reach day 30, and hopefully at that point it gets easier. Did for me.

 

Thanks, Donaldj!

I have to just expand on this. Porn addiction is also a means for coping with emotional problems. My main issue hasn't been simply that I am bored (though that's a part of it). I've been using porn to essentially bury emotional issues and hide from my own thoughts and feelings.

It's a coping mechanism, like any drug, so if you're in a particularly low point, your brain may be screaming for its shot of heroin (PMO) back before it confronts you with some serious shit. This manifested for me as heavy depression.

Thankfully this stuff is temporary, but bear in mind you could have been using porn to avoid some major problems in your life, and now that you don't have that safety net you just have to bear the brunt of it. There are always positives though, and the biggest positive for me was a crucial paradigm shift. It's subtle, but after a year of rebooting, in spite of the relapses, I'm a significantly more mature person than I have ever been or thought I would be.

Just distract yourself as much as possible, and like you said, go out and interact with humans and girls especially, even just friends. Socializing is the cure to depression and anxiety. I don't buy the whole introversion is a great thing spiel, but I guess that's for a blog and not for here.