Day 17. Things I don't miss about being addicted to pmo > brain fog > anxiety > depression > no motivation > feeling bad about myself > amount of time wasted watching porn > lack of energy > relentless thoughts of revealing women
Day 18. Not doing pmo for long enough I feel forced to confront everything I've been avoiding. Pmo is such an effective distraction to take your mind off your problems, but your problems and lousy life get worse from avoiding them. It seems that mentally I've turned my problems into unsolvable catastrophes. Such as somehow I've made myself believe that I am incapable of getting a girlfriend. Incapable of being responsible for myself. "Incapable" as a word to define myself by. I've learned a very self inflictive language to describe myself with since I was a child. It hurts to have gone through what I went through, but I can actually take care of myself. From braving new experiences in life I've found out that yes I'm not Incapable like I once believed myself to be. It was a complete lie. Well I am done thinking myself incompetent, and done being incompetent. I don't know about you guys, but when I relapse my feelings of incompetence increase. My feelings of self worth are lowered. The only way through this is through taking action to achieve the life I want to live.
Day 19. As hard as nofap is, I think the tougher thing to deal with is what to do with your time. I know for a fact that when I was on a really good nofap streak I was busy with projects and building my future. I had no urges for porn because my energy and thoughts were focused on positive momentum. I was thinking about this yesterday and that I felt like I wasted my time on the internet like youtube and I felt like I wanted to do other things. I don't like the all or nothing mentality anymore because it hasn't helped me. So I will allow myself some time to watch youtube videos, but not so much that I end up feeling like I wasted my time. I can view as a hobby like any other. Right now I will continue a book that I was reading. I'm almost completed it and I feel good about it. I haven't really read a book in about a year and I feel bad about that. So some time for reading, some time for youtube, some time for gaming, some time for gym, some time for study.
Day 44 - Jedi Knight Definitely believe this is important. Sometimes, people try to live like literal monks, rather than adjusting to a life that doesn't include porn. That means living and enjoying the pleasures of life. I think living like a monk has its uses as a temporary measure, and good for short periods, but I agree, an all or nothing mentality isn't healthy.
Checking in and going strong but have noticed that I think I've been having wet dreams in the night - I guess this is normal after 3 weeks of no PMO?
Day 20. I've noticed something that is a trigger to relapse for me because it's stressful. I've talked about this with my therapist many times but I still find it hard to deal with. The way that my parents raised me and treated me is that I'm basically incompetent. And that in turn made me believe I was so. They didn't have trust in me that I could deal with the situations of life, and that I couldn't deal with my own problems. Yesterday I was thinking about this, and I realized my mom does it because she thinks herself incapable. She is also narcissistic though so any kind of open dialogue with her is very difficult. One time when I was young, I said to her that I have stomach issues like IBS, and that I was attempting to fix it through diet. Which I have. But her response to me was incredibly bad parenting, and self centered of her. She said that she has similar issues and that she's on medication for it. She said I would need to be on medication for the rest of my life for it. I'm not exaggerating. She was upset that I found my own solution, or believed at the time I did anyway. She was so upset that she wanted me to suffer like she does with her decisions made without thought. So her perception of incompetence of me, is really a reflection of her own self image. But as a little boy I of course took it personally and believed her. To this day though at the age of 30, I still struggle with those perceptions that she and my father gave me. Both of them treated me as incompetent. For my father it's the same reason I think, that he sees himself as incompetent and projected that onto me. He was "nicer" about it, but there were still a lot of fights about it. I could never get him to understand, I think because he can't see how he perceives himself in the first place. So those feelings have cropped up for me in the past couple of days. And I notice how much of my attention it can soak up. To the point of wanting to escape from it with pmo. To escape and waste my time and life. It's like how Smeagol from the Lord of the Rings felt upset by his family, and he ran off alone into the mountains with the ring. Through his hurt feelings he fed all of his time and energy into the ring, becoming obsessed with it and forgetting to live. Not the perfect example because the ring convinced him that his family was being selfish, when they weren't. But good enough of an example. The point is how Smeagol reacts, and how turned inwards he becomes, turning into Gollum. Hunched over, worrying the ring, and super alert to any presence that might ruin his obsession. His one and only affirmation telling him how perfect he is. The ring wouldn't let him down. The ring wouldn't be so mean to him as his family was. He felt at peace with his perfect ring, it was the rest of the world that was wrong and hurtful. Only the ring could be his friend. I hope that people understand the parallel. Am I saying that that's what pmo addiction can lead to? Yes. And it's important to understand how I might end up like that. Maybe not as bad as Gollum, but heading in the direction of that rather than his opposite like Frodo or Aragorn. Yes, my parents did actually abuse me. But it's not worth it to me to keep holding onto it, to the point of turning into Gollum and forgetting to live. Always holding onto hurt because they didn't show me any other possible way to be. To conclude, I don't want to be held down anymore feeling incompetent. These feelings have been largely reinforced through, yes my parents behaviour, but also largely that I wasn't very active in life to begin with. If my parents were the same, but as a child I also was very active and learned how to do things anyway, things may not have turned out the same. At that point I might have been just confused as to why my parents chose to be victims. A solution I cna do is to simply not act on those feelings of incompetence. And to instead act as if I am capable anyway. To show myself an example that I am capable of taking care of myself and thinking for myself.
I was watching this podcast, and for pmo triggering reasons, I'll just say they usually have a panel of young women on for a discussion. I won't say the name just in case it triggers peoples pmo response, but if you know what I'm talking man that's hilarious entertainment. But this one show I watched there is a girl that is exactly my type and I felt like wanting to get a girlfriend like her. I got no pmo trigger response at all from watching, and I feel good about that. But thinking about wanting a girlfriend again made me think about why am I even watching this? It's entertaining, but it won't help me get a girlfriend at all. Feeling like that coming after what happened to me today too. I'll save for posting about that tomorrow because I already made a lengthy post today. But for right now I'll just say I'm going to get down to work focusing on something productive instead of just watching youtube.
